the white parasol

moved

2009-01-30T07:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Son, Love Dad (© 2007 Trevor Dobson))

2008-07-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

A vision for David (his son on heroin, at present in rehab).

"Dear David,

Within God, the cord becomes stronger and whiter, for all to see that it shall not be broken until the time of God’s own choosing, then with a gentle sleep you pass from mortality to immortality. Until that day, let no unclean thing or addiction break the cord. Be assured in strength.”

“I hope this - what I have written down - will be an inspiration to whoever has an ear to Listen.” Trevor Dobson.

“The spirit will quicken your imagination and create a concern in your heart from which you cannot escape. When this happens it is almost certain that you are being guided. No matter how dark the situation and no matter how gloomy the outlook, it is always right to see God.

The Christian (spiritual) life is not a fight ending in eternal rest. The ‘Rest’ begins now. When you become a Christian you enter the same kind of rest that God is enjoying. He sees the beginning and the end and is disturbed by nothing in-between. He knows that all will end in victory.

Drop your anchor into the depths of his be-assuring revelation, and rest in His rest.

Be sure he knows everything we feel, because Christ has worn our flesh.

As Christ’s life and love flow like a stream through us to others we experience more of his abundant life for ourselves.

Prayer . . . . makes us spiritually fit. . . .

The Holy Spirit is ours to keep. Power is available to you at every second and every minute of every day.

When trouble comes, a redeeming process begins in the heart, and in the mind, a process which is designed to instil God’s peace into every part of our being.

It will leave us with a deposit of moral and spiritual inoculation against everything that happens in the future, so we should welcome our hurts. They may hurt deeply at the time, but they save us from greater hurts in the future.

There are two ways of speaking the truth; you can simply speak the bare, harsh truth, or speak the truth in Christ which is much motivated by love, that honours Christ’s character and name.

The problems we face can be tools in His hands to polish and refine, so ourselves will shine in the likeness of His Son.

Another way to become more like Him, is to soak our minds in the world of God (saturation and concentration).

Worry and fear has a way of drawing trouble towards it, just like iron is drawn towards a magnet.

God’s grace can forgive, cleanse and renew the worst of sinners and make them fit for the service of God…(empowerment).

All God requires is your consent and co-operation.

Revival begins in the most unlikely places. He comes to a certain place or person not because they are holy, but to make them holy.

God will always equip us, who regard the beast as an evil influence and fail to see him as an evil intelligence. The Bible shows him as one who opposes, deceives, persecutes, blasphemes and tempts. . . of a destructive and aggressive personality.

God seldom uses anyone as a warrior until he puts that person through the test of suffering and adversity. Jesus began his ministry in the wilderness of temptation.

When we get hurt, our natural and sinful reaction is to hurt the person who hurts us. Christ’s attitude, however, is to transfer the whole matter into God’s hands. This was how Jesus was able to allow himself to feel hurt, without allowing the hurt to develop into a root of bitterness. In facing criticism, we must remember that some criticism is just and necessary, if so, we must listen and profit from it.

Our critics may be the very hammers of God moulding us into shape.

Joy is a mark of spiritual maturity and comes about in proportion to how deeply we relate to God and Christ.

When we get rid of inner conflicts and wrong attitudes to life, we will almost automatically burst into joy. Joy comes in, only to flow out, and in the flowing it is increased.

The mystery of love would never have been understood, had not Jesus come to show it to us.

May we learn to love and accept people who need Jesus and to know that Jesus loves them.

Cultivate an eye that finds God in ordinary things.

Do not focus so much on what may lie ahead that you miss what God is doing in your ordinary moments.

Realise that you are awakening, and ask God to help you adjust to this.

Remember, you are not just a body, but body, mind and spirit and if you are to develop as a “whole” being – all these three need to awaken together.

For God dwells alone with each one of us, no longer doubt that He is near, and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts.

Remember God wants us back even more than we could possibly want to be back. In truth God can scarcely bear to be without us.

No, it is not yours to open buds in blossom. Try shaking it, strike it, it is beyond your power to make it blossom; your touch spoils it. You tear its petals to pieces but no colours appear and no perfume comes out. It is not for you to open the bud into blossom. He who can open the bud does it simply. At God’s breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind; colours flash out like diamonds. The perfume betrays a sweet secret. He who can open the bud does it so simply, when the time is right.

When Jesus asked Peter “do you love me?” He added nothing else. What He said was enough. Do you love me? Can you allow my love to touch you in your weakness, set you free and empower you there?

Thereafter the only power Peter had was Jesus’s love for him. He told and retold the story of his own unfaithfulness and how Jesus had touched him. When he proclaimed the Gospel of grace, he preached from his weakness, the power of God. This is what will convert us, and the people around us. If they see the love of Christ has touched us.

The first step toward a new beginning begins with accepting where you are and exposing your poverty and emptiness to the love that is everything. Don’t try to feel anything, think anything or do anything. With all the good will in the world you cannot make anything happen. Don’t force prayer. Simply relax in the presence of God you half believe in and ask Him for His touch.

No one can function long in a helping profession without feeling its impact.

Home is that sacred space, external or internal where we don’t have to be afraid, where we have hospitality and love.

To those of us that are in flight, who are afraid to turn around lest we run into ourselves, Jesus says “You have a home – I am your home – claim me as your home, you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home. It is right where you are, in your innermost being. In your heart.”

We get so into ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive, that we become immune to the glory of creation. We barely notice the cloud passing over the moon, or the dewdrops clinging to the rose-leaf, the ice on the pond comes and goes, we take up every leaf as fast as it falls, we miss the experience of awe, reverence and wonder around us. Our world is full of God’s grace and is revealed in spirit.

To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners.

There is a beautiful honesty to those who don’t have to wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are. When a person is truly honest, it is impossible to insult them. Personally, there’s nothing to insult, their inner honesty has set them free. You must be convinced of this, trust it, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.

When we accept ourselves for what we are, we stop our hunger for power and the acceptance of others. We are no longer pre-occupied with being powerful or popular. We no longer fear criticism because we accept the reality of our human limitations. Simply be being true to ourselves (in Christ) brings lasting peace. We become grateful for the gift of live and we learn to love and respect ourselves. To know that God accepts me as I am is a tremendous help in becoming a better, more enlightened person.

As we glance up in our hour of need, don’t be astonished to see the eyes of Christ open with wonder, deep with understanding, gentle with compassion, full of amazing grace, instead of universal disgrace.

We believe in God’s grace in theory, but somehow we cannot apply it to our everyday lives. The truth is that we do not/ cannot earn God’s acceptance. Yet he gives it to us willingly, freely, no matter what we have done.

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

Paul writes in Ephesians: “It is by Grace that you have been saved by faith. Not by anything on your own, but by a gift from God. Not by anything you have done so that nobody can take the credit. Remember you are accepted by that which is greater than you. Do not intend anything. Just accept that you are accepted.”

The gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat-up and burnt-out. It is for the burdened, the poor, the weak, the sinful with faults and limitations, the bent and bruised who feel their lives are a disappointment to God. It is for anyone who has grown weary and discouraged on the way.

What a transformation we encounter when we focus on god. Time spent with God always produces results. Remember God is a God of beauty as well as a God of pure power.

Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, a taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideals. Years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideals wrinkles his soul. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great, receptive to nature and God. If one day you become bitter, gnawed out by despair, then may God have mercy on your old man’s soul.

Although spiritual progress comes from God, we are the ones who carry it out. He supplies the power, but we supply the willingness. God gives grace to the humble. God guides everyone who wants to be guided.

As we allow our roots to go down deep into Christ (or me, the Earth), we begin to flower into the beautiful kind of person God intended us to be. Conscience is the capacity within us to decide what is right and what is wrong, but what it decides is largely determined by the training it has received (re the nurturing of the spirit). Some people have little or no conscience, because their parents too no trouble to train them, but others have an over-sensitive one because their parents made excessive demands. When God designed us in the beginning he made us with the awful power of choice, with the possibility that we might go astray and break our own hearts as well as His. Yet parents take the same risk when they bring a child into this world. The child may go astray and crush their lives as well as their own. But parents assume that awful risk. Why? Because they determine that they will do their best for their child and make the child’s problems their own. Before God made us, He was determined to do his best for us and to make our problems His very own (Joshua 24-15).

It is not easy or enough to point out other people’s sins to them; they must be led to point them out for themselves, then and only then are they on the road to getting rid of them. As we live our lives on the level of faith, we have all the fullness of God to draw upon. That fullness is reviving and regenerates us, work and witness spring from infinite resources from within us. The more we give, the more we have to give. Note, not “have to” as in “must” but “have to” as in “are able to give”.

When God designed you he made you – allowed you – to have an awful power of choice. In heroin you made a wrong choice. This vision came to me as a message to you directly; more than this - there is nothing more I can say on this situation. Love Dad.”

Visualization for the Self (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-07-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

Imagine a pearl, deep inside you, of pure, white light, smooth and shining, brilliant and clear, a thing of beauty – it is your beauty within, it is you, your true self.

Focus on it, absorb it, visualize its shape, colour, size, brightness, imagine it as big or small as you wish. Talk to it, sing to it, speak to it in any way you feel you want to, express any emotions you want to, acknowledge your love and appreciation of it.

Know/realize it is always safe, in its own space, deeply within. Give it colour, space,shape, form, sound.

Come back when you feel ready, leaving the pearl in its safe, secret, sacred place. Clothe it with bones, blood vessels, muscles, organs etc., finally package it in its final “envelope” – your skin. Know everything is in place around the inner you; the you is intact, protected, safe, out of harm. . . .and always shining.

The Fig Leaf (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-06-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

I was having a chat with someone the other night on gmail pop-up and she mentioned something being about a figment of our imagination. As in, do we exist at all or are we just a figment of our own imaginations?

Then I wrote that perhaps that what the fig-leaf means in the Garden of Eden in Genesis: perhaps the fig leaf represents the figment or the self-delusion of who we think that we are. If that is the nature of the 'beast' perhaps then the 'beast' is represented in the snake. That, in nature, we are a delusion of self. We do not know who we are.

The apple of knowledge gave us seemingly the delusion of thinking that we 'know' everything. And yet we don't and still think that we do.

That might explain it anyway!

Knowledge is...(© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Knowledge has to be within as well as without.
You could learn, for example, all about astronomy, assimilating the information like a parrot, to repeat from memory, but you may not necessarily understand it.

True knowledge is an understanding of your knowledge, a deep inner knowing that is brought out with learning experiences and teachings.

True knowledge never ends. It is infinite, unending, eternal and opens us up to the wonder of knowledge. Each day brings us knowledge – new understandings, new awakenings, new awarenesses.

Be aware and awake to knowledge.

What Prayer Is (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

Prayer is the language of the Universe, the language of the cosmos. It is the simplest, yet the most profound language that there is. Prayer unites us to Heaven and Earth. The Divine spark within us enables us to pray – otherwise prayer would be impossible. Were it not for our God-connection within, we would be mute and dumb. We would have no means of connecting to the Source of the Universe.

Language enables us to communicate with one another in our ‘mother-tonge’ and in languages that we may learn, but prayer is set aside from this concept; it is not restricted by the languages of our many differing multi-cultures. Prayer is an ‘omni-language’ – we can pray in English, French, Russian and in any language. Prayer is totally and absolutely Universal and uniting.

Prayer is the instructive and intuitive language that we are born with, and it is always ‘for the use of’, whether we use it daily or rarely, or never! It has no grammar, no format, can be utilised in all situations, can be silent or spoken, short or lengthy, one word or many. It can be used at any time, in any place; it can be forgotten or remembered, it can be poetry or prose, have the ‘shush’ factor or the ‘shout’ factor; it can be single or collective, personal or public.

Prayer is so many things. It is all things and everything and our lives are the richer for it. Prayer is a miracle language, freely given to each and every sould, it is our God contact, our Divine out-reach, it is our sacred ‘life-line’.

Prayer is Power, Peace and Positive. ‘Pray without ceasing, pray’.

A Beautiful Prayer (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

I asked God to take away my habit.
God said “No”. “It is not for me to take it away, but for you to give it up”.

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said “No”. “His spirit is whole, his body is only temporary”.

I asked God to grant me patience.
God said “No”. “Patience is a by product of tribulations, it isn’t granted, it is learned”.

I asked God to give me happiness.
God said “No”. “I give you blessings; happiness is up to you”.

I asked God to spare me pain.
God said “No”. “Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to me”.

I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said “No”. “You must grow on your own! But I will prune you to make you fruitful”.

I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.
God said “No”. “I will give you life, so that you may enjoy all things”.

I asked God to help me love others as much as He loves me.
God said “Aaah, finally you have the idea”.

(From Lyn, Ann’s American friend)

Sacred Tools(© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

Sacred tools are important, wonderful, helpful helpers and assistants but tools are simply that.

Tools for the use of.

For the highest good of.

They should never become of such a strong focus that the original intent/focus is diminished. It is possible for us to sometimes be unaware that our focus on the tool is so intense, that this ‘over-focus’ in itself diminishes the higher focus of intent.

Like ritual, tools are a great help, but we must guard against ‘getting lost’ in tools or rituals; tools should never take ‘centre-stage’.

Perhaps the most sacred of tools are the ones that are inherent within us; the heart and the mind. When heart and mind work synergistically and sincerely, harmoniously and holistically, with wholeness and holiness, our system becomes aware of its connection to the ‘entire environment’ – the universe.

It is a profound – the most profound – connection, superceding and surpassing all other connections. This recognition of the high vibrational energy of pure love, also gives rise to the knowledge that each one of us is love in every situation.

Love is the purest, deepest, kindest supreme emotion. This Divine Love, Love Unconditional never judges us, just enfolds us, ‘holds us’ for eternity.

The joy of this realisation, the awareness of this concept is the highest blessing we can receive.

The Ultimate Blessing, the blessing of blessings, the Blessing of the Divine.

All sacred tools need to be respected and used with this heart/mind loving connection; to enable us to use our sacred tools to the best of their potential power.

Intent with love is paramount!

Love (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

Love is living, giving, radiating,
it is transformational and "sense-ational”;
it is powerful and potent, but pure and gentle;
it is universal and eternal;
it is complete, has no beginning, no ending;
it simply “is”.
Unconditional love surpasses all other vibrations.
It is the Love of the Divine.
Love is the most blessed, most sacred of gifts. . . a gift for you, for me, for all.
Love, love, love, love is all you need.

Channelling Thoughts of Ann (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

2008-03-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

These are some of the channelled thoughts that have occurred most prolifically during the past ten years or so:

Ann, I give you poise. Live a life of poise.
Ann, strive for poise, live in poise and balance.
It is as gentle as Reiki, gentle, but potently powerful.
Live in poise and balance, I place it upon you.
Amen.

(Dictionary definition of “poise” is to carry, support in equilibrium, to be balanced. To have equilibrium, dignity and assurance of manner.)

An emotion, feeling, truth that I feel deep within. The blessing of blessings is to be exalted and humbled. Exaltation and humility work hand in hand, side by side (and are also so fundamental to the essence of Reiki, the core of Reiki teaching).

No one is “better than” anyone else. As soon as you are “better than” another the ego is in control, and not the higher self, which is the highest part of ourself, the highest part of our being, the highest part and yet the humblest. Yes, the humblest, because it has nothing but love in it.

The higher self of humility

The self most high

The self most exalted

The higher self of nothing but love

Exalted and Humbled, with love, love most high.

“Humblest” = “Hum-blessed”.

As soon as we class ourselves “better than”. . . . we are denying our Divine Essence.

I thank You for this feeling you place within me,
this profound emotion that You honour me with,
You honour me with the Blessing to share and give out to others.
Amen.

Womb-Man (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-01-31T04:51:00.000-08:00

There is but a "b" which links Woman into Man and then disappears.
Nice to consider this "B" though.
It is like She. "She" contains both "he" and "she".
Mother and Father both contain "her" and "he".
"Mot" means "word" and "Fat" means "corpulent" or "big" or "yield" (as in the fat of the land) so we could have a new definition: "Wordfat".

In a series of articles that I am going to publish under the "Womb-Man" lable, I would like to investigate those apparent differences and drives which often fuel feminism or at least drive a wedge between the sexes. Sometimes in fun, other times in more serious contexts.

The topics will all be entitled with "B" as in "Boobs et al" (about plastic surgery), "Belligerance"(as in wars and who makes them), "Bastard" (how can anyone be that anyway?), "Babies" (the ultimate sex driver) and so on. I shall see how it goes. . .

The Power of Not Quite There Yet (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-01-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

Eckhart Tolle’s book on “The Power of Now” is very good and very powerful. But it is very hard to grasp some things and even with a genuine aspiration to do so, we still fall on our feet of clay. Well, I do. Sometimes I can have really spiritual moments, even days and grasp the ungraspable but to be such a guru or approaching that level as a norm is quite beyond me.

Happily, I really do not think that it is necessary to feel inadequate or incapable when life’s material presence intervenes and drags us back down again; when we feel like we have totally missed the point so we might as well give up.

There are many saints who have grappled with the struggle between what I want and what God wants or what we think God wants. Those normal, everyday feelings when we feel anger, bitterness, jealousy, desire, selfishness (and witness these things from others and actually enjoy them) and plain can’t be bothered will keep intervening because it is normal and human. Our addictions to whatever substances, our cravings for certain circumstances for a bit of a jolly, a bit of respite are part of who we are. Whether ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in whoever’s perspective they are part of who we are. And most saints were not aware that they were saints, remember; this title was given many years after their death, after deep consideration of their lives by other people, many years beyond their life.

I really do find the company of people with acknowledged and embraced shortcomings and vices far more comfortable and even elevating than the company of people who seem to have no vices at all. The reason for this is that they are more likely to accept you as you are, with your vice or shortcoming. To be with someone who seems to have conquered all desire, all attachments to this world whilst you struggle on can be daunting. I am not saying it can’t be elevating and create aspirations but after a good read through a chapter of The Power of Now, I would still like to pour out some wine and have a cigarette to reflect on it. Well, I haven’t got very far with letting go then have I?

Probably not.

But I do believe that a very practical way of moving forward at all, is to live from where we are right now. We cannot possibly start from anywhere else can we? As the Irish man said to you when you asked the way from here to there: “well, if you want to go there, I wouldn’t start from here!”. But where else can we start from? Indeed, do we want to go anywhere at all?

Realisation over the years of times of grace, enlightenment, some visions, signs, dreams, ponderings and changing perspectives within the context of the very hard reality of every day life and how I fall short most times, including creating very difficult circumstances within that context, actually helps me just try to be content with who I am right now, in the present reality including what I think it is, which might, indeed, be wrong. But it is all I have. And I shall start from here even if I get stuck.

Like any multi-faceted stone, a diamond, some facets are highly polished and some are very rough and dull but they each make up the whole. We are like a diamond; there is a desire to live through the highly polished facets and appear to be all that way. But outsiders will see those other facets too, even if we refuse to and that is arrogance. I know all about arrogance, selfishness, cowardice, haughtiness, lack of compassion as I have them all in huge measure. That’s a lot to come to terms with but maybe whilst I am doing that, I will leave other people’s shortcomings alone. Perhaps by trying to address the huge plank in my own eye, I shall not endeavour to take out the splinter in someone else’s. And a diamond is for ever, remember.

It’s a start anyway. The power of being not quite there is quite substantial, in itself.

What is politics about? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-01-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

Politics is about anything other than the truth.

It can't ever be about the truth because where ever you have two people you have the beginning of the deceit; where you have three, you have the beginning of siding with the one most able to press your own buttons. The truth gets lost in the interests of self-interest.

If there is a politician who is capable of standing up impartially for the truth, then their party will get rid of them as they are of no use to party-interests and narrow national interests.

So those who are left are the ones who will act in self-interest, party-interest and national interest, in that order.

There are always people looking for a podium upon which to place their particular inadequacy or "chip on their shoulder", so that they can 'become' "something important". Clubs with members and political parties are good places to do this as you can practise on all kinds of people, press buttons, get alliances, build walls (not bridges) and generally give yourself a reason to live. Which means that they are sad people; politicians who get 'somewhere' in national politics are the cream of the notoriously inadequate with good suits on and vulgar salaries.

Don't be deceived by their education, intelligence or presentational skills.

A fool is a fool. An educated fool is still a fool. (I think it was Oscar Wilde that said this).

Channellings (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmitt)

2008-01-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

These writings are “channellings” – mind thoughts that come into the conscious mind with a profound resonance, yet they have a subconscious origin; they ultimately find expression via the written or verbal word.

They are an expression of Universal Knowledge and intelligence, vibrations given from the universe, and are a culmination of many words and phrases that at some point have made an impact on my own mind processes.

I share them with an open mind and heart and pass them on, so that in the reading of these passages of prose, others may find stimulation, support, comfort, encouragement. They are shared with the wish that your own awarenesses may be enhanced, awarenesses that are endemic within everyone’s inner core; they simply, patiently await that time of awakening. Perhaps these few words may be in some way that special catalyst.

The writings are mainly my own channellings, but also include “thought-full” words of other writers, ancient and modern. Together they make a “pot-pourri” of messages from the Universe, to enhace the awarenesses of each one of us, and help us to find our Truth. When we find our Truth, we have within us that Peace which “passeth all understanding”.

Many insights and channellings occur when the system is in trauma, even severe trauma. This is when the higher energies (e.g. Angel energies) bring gifts from the Universe to resurrect us, support us, confort us and re-align us on our spiritual path. Traumas are invaluable teachings, bringing profound lessons for our spirit. These circumstances and situations can help to raise our own vibrational level, bringing us the concept of “light at the end of the tunnel” and leaving with us (if we allow our awarenesses to expand) new facets of perception, new insights, new understandings and our vibrational frequencies become raised and uplifted.

It is then that we are able to recognise new truths about ourselves and our Universe, we begin to recognise the Divine within us, within each and every one of us, and we discover who we really are.

Traumas overwhelm us or eventually uplift us, it is always our choice, our free will is never compromised by the Universal energies. They simply, gently, powerfully, encourage, help and guide us to experience the joy of our own self-discovery.

Violence be-Gooded (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-01-11T02:36:00.000-08:00

Sounds a bit odd for a bit of spiritual development doesn’t it?

Violence as a word means: "physical force used to inflict injury or damage," from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr. violence, from L. violentia "vehemence, impetuosity," from violentus "vehement, forcible," probably related to violare. Weakened sense of "improper treatment" is attested from 1596. (© 2001 Douglas Harper, www.etymonline.com.)

What about a violin? It is interesting to find that there is a relationship between the term 'violin' and the Roman Goddess of Exaltation or Victory. Does this mean that there is a link between violin and violence? It is equally amazing to discover that there is an etymological relationship between the stringed instruments and the device used to torture slaves. If exaltation or victory can be good in a peaceful sense, could the world ‘violence’ also have a positive outcome? Could it be a good violence or a bad violence depending on our actions? What about the violence in a storm? Is that good or bad or is it just a result, an effect of underlying causes? After a storm, all is calm and clean and, sometimes, after an outburst of personal anger there is calm because we have let go of the irritant. Why do we relate anger and violence so closely?

Our anger is directed internally and not always at our family and friends in an overt way. In a covert way, however, it might take hold and take charge. Do we lash out at others in a physical way because of the internal festering of anger?I

If we have to be constantly ‘nice’ to our family and friends we have to hide who we really are because who we really are, might have a great deal of anger and hurt so we masquerade our nice side to our nearest and dearest, mostly.

We are never allowed to bring the issues which anger us out into the open with our family and friends unless seeking approval for the same ‘views’ because this is not a ‘nice’ thing to do.

With our family and friends we have been conditioned to be ‘nice’ so, as we equate anger and violence with being ‘not nice’ we can be suppressed.

Our best friends and family can often (unwittingly) keep us in our untruthful state for all of our lives. Why? Because it suits us and them. If we do not have to face ourselves then we will not have to unearth our anger, and then work it out. Equally, therefore everyone is in on the collusion to remain hidden. But we act in ignorance.

We tend to choose ‘friends’ and ‘colleagues’ based on the lies holding our families together; our families continue the ongoing lie through conditioning from birth; we are given the ground rules and we are programmed.

There is enough guilt laid upon any one to stop any ‘untoward’ actions and overt violence within our social groups. To consolidate us, we might also choose our friends who will equally help us continue to live the lie. Why should we choose people as our friends who make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves?

Festering anger which will get worse with guilt about the underlying real way we feel about our family and ourselves, will come out in other ways. Ultimately, these ‘other ways’ will find us our enemies.

Why should this be? Our enemies will give us a reason and a rationale for being violent towards them in a justifiable way. They allow us to be violent (negatively). So we can vent our anger. (Vent is associated with ‘wind’ and wind is usually part of a storm, moving things on, changing the scene.)

Our enemies could be our best friends in disguise, because they have the power to bring out of us what and who we really are. Their views are probably accurate about us, because they have a better perspective of who we are and what we give out.

We are not concerned about hiding anything from them that might be construed as ‘not nice’ to our family and friends.

In fact, we can often get our family and friends to join us in this placing of the anger externally, because then they can vent their true feelings too.

So we direct all of our anger externally and create a ‘violent’ result. These violent emotions are directed elsewhere. Internally, in the known groups, we can agree to remain covert and we can pretend that everything is all right.

Yet could violence brought out in the healing atmosphere of love give a beautiful effect? In that the violence played out could become positive, not negative as in physical fighting and armed warfare. So ‘violence’, like ‘effect’, could be positive or negative. Is ‘violence’ the ‘cadence of ourselves? ( Cadence (music), a particular series of intervals or chords that ends a phrase, section, or piece of music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence). Our vibrations at every level of our being will be making music.

How could it become positive? We would have to face our emotions and ourselves. We would have to let these powerful emotions overwhelm us, flow over us and be set free. Like a beautiful raging storm, these powerful emotions will wreak havoc but be set free on their way.

Love is not blind, it is clear sighted. We are blind in our conditioning, we cannot see clearly at all and we are too frightened to start clearing out the rubble because of what we might have to face inside ourselves.

Perhaps we can look at violence as a tool to explain to us what is going on: that this is the music we are creating from our selves, then it would be plausible to learn of the relationship between a beautiful musical instrument, associated with the most sublime music on earth, and ‘violence’, associated with war and hurt.

If we are violins, our strings are being plucked by ourselves, family, friends, enemies and others. The music we create comes from these plucking fingers. Perhaps the cadence of our world today, is through us all being the instruments, (our strings being plucked by each other) and therein lies our delivered violence.

Violence, I believe, is just the vibrations that we produce from and to each other; our cadences or our vibrations are the resulting violence which spreads throughout the earth. Violence, therefore could be wholly harmonious and beautiful. Violence is merely our music.

What is the music that we are making on this good earth? What is our score? Note that the association between ‘score’ and settling differences in a ‘violent’ way is known; as is the association between a musical manuscript and ‘score’.

There are so many parallels that I cannot ignore. So I ponder on.

Prejudice (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2008-01-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

Let not prejudice blind us to truth and universal law.
Might we come back and be that which we have hated?
So let it all go.

Give it up.

Bid it farewell and give it to the light of Christ; it shall be taken away from you.

Then it is finished and we have only love.

Power of the Not Quite There Yet? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

2007-12-21T06:02:00.000-08:00

Can we ever really understand The Lord's Prayer? The truth is that we do not know what truth is so how can we know what foregiveness is? The Way forward is what then?

Perhaps the Power of the Not Quite There Yet (towards Eckhart Toll's "The Power of Now" that is).

Sometimes we feel and know that we are behaving in a way that is not true. Then we feel guilty so perhaps our conscience is telling us this and that is at least a power in itself. Not perfect and not in "the now", but a start maybe.

We cannot seem to overcome our behavioural ‘norms’ because it is too embarrassing to do something completely spontaneous, without prejudice and yet with a feeling of knowing it is the right thing. That is why we feel guilty.

Throughout a lifetime of going and being part of ‘our’ groups we become institutionalised or programmed and why not? It helps. It helps us to ‘function’ but it doesn’t help us to grow.

What if someone comes over to us (a stranger) and offers a welcome, or wants a welcome? That is nice. What if they are someone not like us, what if they are different to our ‘norms’ and they are the type of person to whom we feel a dislike, a prejudice? Do we discreetly snub or just ignore them? Or what if a stranger is not acknowledged and we feel that they are not our type of person so we won’t bother. Well, they are not like me, so it’s ok. But there is the guilt.

Over the years this gets compounded and, despite our inner knowing of disharmony – for no other reason than being confirmed in our behaviour and adhering to our ‘norms’ – we carry on. But there is the inner guilt.

Thinking of what people might think of us is the key dark hole. We stay there because at least we are accepted in this with others who think the same. Thinking and thoughts can control us and they do.

We will often not do something overtly different to our set of norms because we are too frightened to leave them aside. It is frightening to be exposed. To be left without our protection.

So thoughts rule us. The personal thoughts of what 'our' people are thinking about us can govern us and keep us within the boundaries.

These boundaries are our prejudices. We might argue that they are not ‘prejudices’ that they are ways of living and functioning and getting us through life and along our way.

But our true nature is nothing to do with our race, our nationality, our family, our friends, our politics with a small and a capital ‘p’ and our thoughts are from our ego and they are dangerous. That is why we carry guilt. Because we know our true nature deep down. It might be so deep that we do not recognise it for what it is so we just feel uncomfortable and carry on.

What is our true nature then?

Our true nature is to be free of all boundaries and restrictions and prejudices. This is the essence of life.

I cannot make this mean anything of sense without declaring a fundamental understanding of what life is – at least in as far as I can make sense of it, not in the comprehensive sense of knowing the whole universe and the ultimate meaning of life. But in order for me to make sense of what it is exactly that Christ was teaching and what other religions and/or spiritual directions tell us, I realise that we are one being, but that we must reincarnate on this earth and live out different lives, like an actor on a stage. And if life is but a stage (as Shakespeare famously said) then we can also say that a stage is life. In this way we take with us our prejudices and play out our lives but with the underlying divine direction to learn to rid ourselves of these, to let go. But our conscious mind or our ego doesn’t know that. It is a bit like being thrown a huge puzzle to put together but with lots of pieces missing. Or like the Irish joke that goes like this: When I asked the Irish man how to get from here to there, the Irish man replied that, if I wanted to go there, I had better not start from here then!

The thing is that we have to start from here. We have nowhere else to start from. But that joke is not as silly as it seems as it holds a deep truth.

Often, I have pondered the words of The Lord’s Prayer. Actually, it is a lifetime’s work to understand it. It is related to why we are here (again). It is not a set of words put together for ‘worship’, it is a key set of words put together for enabling us to grow and to understand why we are here; it is about asking for help in our current predicament – our life – whilst we are travelling this incarnation; this is the journey. I am not speaking about ‘the meaning of life’; I haven’t got a clue and I haven’t got much of a clue about ‘the meaning of this life or my life but as the universe is a huge place and there are billions of unexplained things going on and I have got just my one person, I reckon that if I start with ‘what is the meaning of my life?’ then, huge as it is, it is not as huge as trying to figure out the unfigurable. And perhaps it is as good a start as any.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy Name,

Thy Kingdom Come,

Thy Will be done on earth,

As it is in heaven.

God is in heaven, so we can reach him only by praying or meditating (they can be the same thing), by looking into ourselves and by contacting him for help from our deepest being, our soul. We can speak to him from our soul, not from our ego. This is because our soul has no barrier to him. Our ego does. Our ego uses logic and barriers whilst our soul uses knowing and love (that is why we feel guilty when we act from our ego and our soul is made unhappy).

We direct him to send his kingdom. We do not ask him to. We tell him to.

We direct him that we want his Will to be done on the earth, just like it is in heaven. Which implies that at the moment his Will is not being done here in its entirety, unlike in heaven where it is being done.

Give us this day our daily bread.

We direct him to give us what we need to progress through this life, day by day. Which implies that we need to be aware of the present, of the now, to understand the lesson or the food for thought as well as having the material food we need.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

This is one of the most puzzling lines of the prayer. If you read it in the way that you ask for forgiveness, just like you (obviously) forgive those who ‘trespass’ against you, you can almost believe that you just about forgive anyone, anything and therefore you will be sure to be forgiven. But I do not think that it means this.

If you read it in the way that we are asking God to forgive us in exactly the same way that we forgive others, we might realise that this ‘forgiveness’ is a bit baffling. We rarely forgive, that is why. Which means that if we rarely forgive then we ask God rarely to forgive us. That is what we are asking. But why would we ask that? Why wouldn’t we ask to be forgiven anyway, even though we might not forgive?

True forgiveness is to live your life in such a way that absolutely no grudge, prejudice or injustice affects the way that you feel at your deepest level and in the way that you behave towards people. That you feel constantly at one with everything around you – not because everything is good, but because everything is not good.

So how on earth do we get out of this one?

Chronologically speaking, there is no true differentiation between all of the great religions of the world. Buddhism was around long before Christ came to earth. What Buddhism teaches is to find awareness and that re-incarnations allow us to go through all of the lessons that we need in order to achieve this. When Christ came there was no contradiction, just a move forward because he actually provided a way out of continuous re-incarnations to achieve the ultimate. His sacrifice on earth was to take upon himself all of those guilts that we feel and enact out of human nature; living in Sin is living without God, that is all. His way was to give us heaven sent Grace to enable us to find our way forward beyond the constant karma and re-incarnation as Buddhism teaches by giving us a direct and unconditional foregiveness from God.

In a Buddhist depiction there is an analogy about receiving something (a package) from someone else that we do not want; perhaps it is hate or jealousy or anger. Buddhism teaches us to send this package back to its sender with love, so that we do not carry this and so that the sender will work out those issues his or her self. In Christ’s New way the story changes somewhat: Christ teaches us to take the package upon ourselves and then let it go upwards to the Divine, to God. In this way, both parties are relieved of the burden and both experience foregiveness as the sin is taken away. This does not contradict Buddhism, it merely takes us all on to a different way forward with the Christ himself intervening on our behalfs. He is giving us a way out and a way forward.

And lead us not into Temptation, but deliver us from Evil.

Still pondering these! Well, I am only human you see.

2007-12-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

During the years of walking a rocky path during my son’s illness I began to notice magpies. Actually it goes back to just before then; two turtle doves used to live in a tree in our house’s garden and they would come back every year. One year, the year before we left that house, they went away and magpies came instead, but I didn’t especially notice them then, just wondered why the turtle doves had gone away and magpies had replaced them.

Often, I would notice just one on its own, in a field, by a roadside, flying into or out of a tree – according to where I happened to glance.

So I would think, oh there we are then, more sorrow.

Please let me have two magpies Lord, I would think.

But often, it would be one.

That is to say I would look up, or around or over there and I would see one magpie.

When I was in St. James’ Hospital looking after my son, his window overlooked a building with a nice clock tower façade near the St. James’ Church on the grounds.

Often, I would see one magpie standing on that tower and I would think to myself: oh sorrow, I know this.

I would think of the Mary Statue in the small church of Notre Dame in Mechelen, Belgium which displays St. Mary in such great sorrow. In her heart are seven, full sized swords; it is such a powerful image that I have never forgotten it and have it with me always. It depicts the greatest sorrow and suffering of earth life and the betrayal of her and her son. Sorrow, such great sorrow.
So I recognised this sorrow and sought solace with Mary.

Then one day, I went to Mass in the St. James’ Church – as I did when possible. The sermon was about Sorrow. Joy comes out of Sorrow. It was from St. John’s gospel "Your sorrow shall be turned into joy." (John 16.20). The priest, Kelvin, pointed out that we actually have no idea what ‘joy’ means; that joy is a level of being and of feeling that is beyond earthly perceived happiness. Joy is reached only through suffering and sorrow and it is a profound feeling far beyond this worldly perception of ‘joy’.

It was speaking to me of course. I went back to the hospital room and sat down in my usual chair by the window. I looked up at the clock tower and I saw two magpies.

Earth logic would call that ‘co-incidence’ but spiritual logic tells me that the co incidents of many years of pondering, wondering and searching were answered to me that very day.

2007-09-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

What is the truth about truth?

We spend so much time deluding ourselves and others that it is no wonder that we haven’t a clue what ‘truth’ is.

We have our own truths. We have our family sanctioned ‘truths’, our social ’truths’, our group ‘truths’. But how do we know what ‘truth’ is?

We are more deluded than truthful. We are programmed and ultimately prejudiced and through these narrow definers we spout our ‘truths’.

Our nationality, our town, our family, our origins can give us our ‘truths’. Are these ‘home truths’ then?

These are delusions of what and who we are. We are not free to see and to hear because we are deluded.

The truth is that we do not know what truth is. If we can convince ourselves of this truth, then we can open the way to move forward.

2007-09-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

What does this mean?

It means a realisation. To accept themselves exactly as they are.

The human condition means that we are prone to 'falling' or 'failing'.

The Saints became aware of their fallings, failings and human condition.
So they accepted them in the light of being aware.
Being aware enabled them to journey on their paths.

Then they understood many fallings and failings and grew in spirit and in light.
By standing under the fallings and failings they drew on God.
Then they overcame some fallings and failings.
By coming over their fallings and failings through the Light.
But they still fell and failed sometimes or often.
And they could recognise this.

And they remained in the human condition and so could forgive us our fallings and failings very readily.

Recognise you as you are. Accept you as you are. God does.

Allow yourself to be and do not blame yourself and load on the guilt about your shortcomings.
We can grow with them, through them and by standing under them.
Sometimes, we can overcome them, but not always.

Do not force it.

Just be aware.

Just become more aware, in time.

Don't rush.

There is all the time in the world.

The Saints know that.

The Saints did not know that they were Saints either.

So you don't have to be a Saint.

You can be an informed sinner and lose the guilt!

2007-09-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

We expect a high standard of living by earning a lot of money and paying low taxes.

We demand this high standard of living so the Home Office and the Foreign Office must act accordingly or we will not vote 'them' in again.

The Home Office must flex its muscles and put emphasis on excluding immigrants;
The Foreign Office must make sure that we get the trade and industry needed to support our lifestyles. To do this, national interest takes precedence over international and environmental interests and over the injustices enacted on the peoples of other countries.

So the Foreign Office declares war on a people whose land or resource is required; there is death, devastation, dissidents and a lot of refugees fleeing.

Some of whom become immigrants.

2007-09-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

Contemporary Life
Immigrants in Britain: a statement.

Well, they have no right here have they?
They are taking our jobs, our social security, our houses, our schools, our communities.

They cause us all the problems of a country which is too full: crime, lack of resources.

If they were not here, we wouldn't have so many problems. They are to blame.

A Reflection on this.

Well, the thing is that we are not seeing clearly.
We are looking for someone to blame for the hurt and anger inside of us, inside you, inside me.
The hurt and the anger inside comes from our prejudices, our conditioning.
Therefore, we cannot see clearly. We cannot understand.

People will move, migrate to another place if they believe that they can achieve a better quality of life for themselves and for their families as would you and I.
They are merely seeking to improve their lot. So are you and I.

2007-09-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

Well, life would be good if it were not for:

the weather;
the taxes;
the neighbours;
the crime;
the immigrants;
the murderers;
the drug pushers;
the paedophiles;
the religious groups;
the atheists;
the radicals;
the extremists;
the politicians;
the terrorists;
the others;
the housing estates;
this house;
this car;
this child's sickness;

this living hell.

2007-09-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Lie.

Who is my neighbour?

S/he who makes me feel comfortable;
S/he who sees the world as I do;
S/he who rejects what I reject;
S/he who finds injustice where I find it;
S/he who believes in what I believe in;
S/he who allows me to stay where I am.

Where are you?
What do you believe in?
Where do you find injustice?
What do you reject?
How do you see the world?
What makes you feel comfortable?

Are you free?

The Truth.

Who is my neighbour?

S/he who makes me feel uncomfortable;
S/he who sees the world as I do not;
S/he who does not reject what I reject;
S/he who finds injustice where I do not find it;
S/he who believes in what I do not believe in;
S/he who does not allow me to stay where I am.

Am I not free?

2007-09-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

What do we want to see?

We want to see things in the perspective of the conditioning and the lies.

Why do we want this?

Because we are too frightened to go outside of the pre-conditioning and the programming.

Why are we too frightened to go outside of the pre-conditioning and the programming?

Because we will be in an unknown place and we will not have any crutches from the world to lean on.

We will not have our boundaries in which we feel comfortable.

We will not have our family to tell us we are ok for as long as we follow their lead.

We will not have our friends to tell us we are ok for as long as we fit in their group.

We will not fit in the group.

The group will reject me.

We will be in a foreign place, all alone.

But we in the foreign place, all alone can meet each other if we look and we see.

And then we can be alone, all one together and others will join.

2007-09-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

What keeps us living the lie?

The conditioning.

Who conditions us?

Our parents.
Our family.
Our school.
Our church.
Our community.
Our friends.
Our colleagues.
Our upbringing.
Our politics.
Our perspectives.
Our self-interest.
Our prejudices come from these.
We do not see without the pre-conditioning of looking at things in a certain way.
We see only what we think we should see.
So we cannot see at all.

2007-09-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

Be as you are.
Be comfortable with your guilt, your vices, your fears and your inadequacies.
Get to know them.
Forgive your 'shortcomings'.
Do not seek to change.
Just seek.

To repent does not mean to ask you to throw off all of your 'faults'.
It means accept yourself.
As you are.

'Go and sin no more' does not mean go and have no faults anymore.
It means go and be comfortable with who you are; get to know yourself; that is being with God.

Not being with God is the sin.
Being with God as you are is the aim.

There are no pre-conditions to being with God.

Then you will begin to know yourself; then you will begin to accept others just as they are.

Then everything changes without any effort or doing.

2007-09-20T06:12:00.001-07:00

The Lie.

It is you. It is them.
They are wrong.
If they did what I expected of them, all would be well.
They have the wrong ideas, so that is why we cannot live with them.
And anyway, they don't like us.
They create war, we don't.
They are the war mongers, we are not.

The Truth.

Is is I. It is not you, it is not them.
I am at fault. You are not at fault.
I am not seeing you clearly. You are seeing me clearly.
Let me look through your eyes.
Let me understand.
This is the bottom line, there is no more.

2007-05-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but calling names won’t hurt me.

You might remember this from your childhood times. It is probably one of the greatest misconceptions in history, along with ‘I think, therefore I am’.

Calling names does hurt. The power of the word and its original intent – (where it comes from inside the one directing it) is as powerful as anything else to cause hurt and harm.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Is it? It depends really on which end of the pen or the sword you are at! But both can be either lethal or without guile. The instrument is at the behest of and utilised at the discretion of, its user.

Descartes’ famous, beloved and enjoyable statement is simply an expression of our ego-mind (I think) controlling the core of our being (I am). In itself, ‘I am’ suffices without the need to revert to thinking words. The core of our being is the ‘I am’ and most certainly, ‘You are’. You exist with or without thought.

The stick, the stone, the sword, the pen and the word and the thought can be as beautiful or as vile or political as the intent makes them. Should the intent come from the ego-directed thinking part of us, it can have the guile and cleverness of the devil himself and it can do great harm to ourselves and others. Should the intent come from the ‘I am’ at the centre of our being, then it can be without guile and cleverness and its delivery will do great good to ourselves and others. If we can encourage our being to control the thinking part, then we can bring even our ego under the control of the centre of the universe. We can shine the light of our being into the core of our ego and we can take back the control. This, in effect, is shining the light onto our shadows (from Jung) or pain bodies (from Eckhart Toll). We can shine the light into those parts of us that Heineken can reach but that we tend to want to hide because we are fundamentally (at our soul level) ashamed of them. But by hiding them we give them much more control over us as they can work out of the shadows, unseen and unchallenged.

Could we or Should we develop our speech and our writing skills?

Individual ways of expression are definitely encouraged in our modern societies wouldn’t you say? I mean, we can dye our hair pink or green, ladle massive lumps of wax or shiny stuff into it and then have it cut like a feather duster; or we can shave our heads completely if we want to, and we can say, with confidence: this is who I am. This is an expression of myself.

We can enlarge or diminish our mammary gland areas, we can have fat deposits sucked out of our thigh areas and we can have a huge circle of pure fat taken out of our abdominal area and we can say, with confidence: this is who I am. This is a much better expression of myself.

We can have our nose structure changed, we can have our teeth made to look like pearls in straight rows, we can change the colour of our irises with stick-on lenses and, if we feel so inclined to do, we can have our lips puffed out with some liquid which will make them pout at all times of the day or night, and during any kind of chore and we can say, with confidence: this is who I am. This is a tightened-up or puffed-up expression of myself.

We can have our faces injected to stop expression lines forming, we can have our whole face and neck lifted up, have a bit lopped off and then stapled into our head and even if we lose our front ear-flaps in the process, that is a small price to pay for our being able to say with confidence: this is who I am. This is a much enhanced model of me.

We can have our whole bodies painted and tattooed with pictures and words if we like, and we can have rings and studs inserted in almost any place and we can say with confidence, this is who I am. This is a better view for you to have of me.

We can say what we like and live as we like as long as it doesn’t materially or apparently affect anyone else. We can swear, mumble, be incoherent and be incapable of putting a complete sentence together and because this is what we have been taught to do or led to do, we can say with confidence: this is who I am. Take it or leave it.

And everyone should allow us to have this free expression of who we think we are and who we so desire to be, because this is what self-expression is all about. Self-expression is really the individualistic expression of our times, self and ego can have complete control and free range. And woe betide anyone who attempts to deny us our rights to do this. What right do they have to stop us doing as we so desire? It’s a free country and we have a right to our own expression and we can do as we like, so there.

Yet, should we seek to develop our speech so that the tempo, the sound and the actual vocabulary will develop and change over time, is that equally allowed its expression?

Amongst all of the fashion-led ideas to do and to be as you like, the actual fundamental facility to speak, which separates us from all other living things on this planet, is the one most likely to be subject to social and prejudicial control. In other words, you shouldn’t do it, unless you have an excuse. The excuse will relate to whether the social background or school you went to allows you to speak well. Speaking well, allowing the muscles to form the words properly through applied thought (that is being aware of what we are saying) will necessarily change what comes out of our mouths. It can even change the way we breathe, in the way that if you exercise your back, arm and thigh muscles it will change the way that you stand and the way that you walk; it will do this because the muscles are being stretched and they are correcting the skeletal framework by pulling it upright again, if gradually. Without exercise and stretching, the vertebrae in the back will have nothing to hold them up against the force of gravity, so they will drop, sometimes into each other (known as the slipped disc). Similarly, not exercising the mouth and facial muscles and incorporating control of our thoughts, many words are likely to be dropped altogether or damaged.

But should you decide that you would like to develop your vocabulary for expression and your speaking, it can imply that you have to go outside of your social norm, your group and your family, if they decide that they cannot accept that you would want to develop this side of yourself. It is the greatest excluder and subject of non-discussion and, when discussed, it can bring out deep-seated prejudices and deeply-felt inadequacies. It is the most hidden yet the most damaging facet of a modern polarised society, as in Britain, where ‘class’ is determined often now by income not by how you speak, and it doesn’t actually allow people from certain geographic areas (the Chav expression being a derisory one related to this) to develop this side of themselves. Disregarding high society’s often affected, short-breathed, high-class speech where the need to distinguish the aristocracy from the plebs is still in vogue or is still required by our social structure, there remains a whole area of society where being able to articulate and speak well, is now definitely considered a thing that we should not do. Which is rather interesting when you consider that the BBC generally has news readers who are able to be understood by any one, not just those from specific regions. No wonder they often plump for readers with educated Scots’ accents to get around the regional accent ‘issue’ for national news! Whilst regional accents do not mean that good articulation is not possible – of course it is possible to articulate well and with accents and emphasis – there is a general tendency towards incoherent speech and uneducated utilisation of vocabulary – the more incoherent and uneducated the better. This, in itself, is an expression of ego-led fashion which controls and inhibits so many people and condemns them to a life of ever-diminishing circles. Even acting, which used to be a socially allowed ‘escape’ route for those who sought verbal and physical expression and development, nowadays brings us very often into the ever-thinning substance of the popular soaps where the more basic and narrow vocabularies take precedence, thereby reflecting and underpinning the social norms. Soap and real life integrate perhaps, and those programmes exhibiting the fly on the wall facet of watching people’s behaviour from a low desire to gape at the exposed shame of the participants is all part of the same ‘language’. Poking fun at and seeing people in indignities is part of the language of demeaning a person. This is not something new of course. Every age has had its opportunities both to develop or lend no dignity to its members and certainly malicious gossip and low intentions is documented well in plays and in historical circumstances alike. What distinguishes our modern age, however, is the fact that we can in no way blame lack of money today for a social and education system which actually desires that some people not aspire and therefore, not develop and, crucially, language is a key factor in keeping people in and out. It’s not a government directive to do this, it is a shadow social psychology of the group and we are all part of this.

Words and how you say and formulate them matter as much as it matters how you approach yourself and others. The intention behind whatever it is that you are doing will be driven by your own ego unless you actively become aware. This is part of the discipline of developing into the person that you really are and this is at the root of some of the greatest religious teachings of the world. The stark contrast of gradual development and discipline in a modern context of immediate gratification and passivity in that we do not have to engage to receive ‘fast food’ other than consume it, or where we do not have to use our own imagination when passively consuming television, is something that is so at odds with our everyday lives now, that even considering it as a notion can be met with genuine incomprehension. The notion of development or education as an end in itself, not as a means to a lifestyle where money flows and we can consume without hindrance seems to have gradually disappeared; and this is at great cost. The cost is to society as a whole but also to ourselves. Instead of reflecting inwards and becoming educated (which simply means to bring out what is already there in the context of the soul and the being) . Training courses are not educators, they are about developing skills. We reflect outwards; hence the massive focus on external expression to the degree that we will indeed change our material selves, in order to attain the material vision that we wish to project, including training to achieve the right income for our lifestyle as opposed to education as an end in itself and not for income and lifestyle reasons. All of this could be compared to the Dorian Gray portrait; whilst we are busy engineering our shells, our bodies, what is happening to our souls?

Yet it is internal focus which lies at the root of intent. Without developing this, every object we use and every facet we have including speech, will come under the control of the shadow in the ego. The intent, therefore, has the power to change our whole lives and our world, by taking the control out of the hands of the ego and giving it back to the being. It is a gradual process so we can expect still to live with all our faults; we can fall down often too. There is no need for immediate perfection. We do not have to panic and screech towards the goal, we just have to move forwards in the knowledge that our light, our being or our consciousness is now beginning to permeate our ego; our intent will change.

Winston Churchill once said that he would spend just a few minutes preparing a six-hour speech and six hours preparing a two minute speech. That’s how much words matter.

The Word became flesh.

When Jesus was in the wilderness and had fasted for forty days and nights he was hungry. “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made into bread. But he answered and said, It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”. (Matthew,III,IV)

2007-05-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

the book excites a great deal of interest including many tourists to Paris. People are genuinely interested in its central subject: that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had a child. Why are people so interested in this?

The spirit, the soul and the discipline of a teaching or a way of life fall nowhere central within the context of our ‘modern society’. Anything outside of the material state is generally not well-represented in our environments where we follow our daily life patterns. Other than pursuing an academic or theological route, there is little evidence, if any, of a spiritual engagement on a daily, practical basis.

Our civilisation was built on Christian values and yet we do not give it much contemporary airing other than ‘religion’ in its institutionalised format and ‘thought for the day’ type programmes. Yet, the flood of publicity, magazine and newspaper articles, provoked by Dan Brown’s novel and feature film “The Da Vinci Code” opens up, once again, society’s interest in the story of Christ.

Whether there is a desire to ‘disprove’ the gospels or just the plain curiosity as to whether Christ had a sexual union (the stuff that soap operas are made of), it excites enough interest in the public. Enough interest that not only reflects a desire to dismiss the Church’s perceived teachings (insofar as people are aware of what they are), but perhaps also to scrutinise what it was all about. I mean, what was it all about?

It seems to me that ‘blind faith’ is a pre-requisite of Catholic ‘acceptance’ of the Gospel and the Mysteries in the context of a church’s approach to delivering the message; it is not usually linked with a spiritual aspect or exercises to develop that side of the person. It is more about behaviour and doing than internal reflection and growth; this from my own experience at schools and at various churches. Often, I have found that the general feeling from the hierarchy is that the masses couldn’t understand these things, as they require theological education, so keep it simple.

I believe that there is not one facet of the Truth that cannot stand scrutiny and I do not believe that we have to go to college and study theology before we can pronounce any opinion or feelings on this. People are frightened of questioning. No wonder; we can be very quickly ‘put right’ if asking about any of the central core ‘beliefs’. Questioning seems somehow or other to ‘threaten’ the central pillar of the Church, yet it is the very key to its survival.

If the massive interest in the Da Vinci code and its apparent dismissing of the central foundation of the Church, is the notion of sex between a man and a woman, that which is the most normal human act of procreation or just consumating a union, then you have to wonder how base our needs are or our curiosity is. Perhaps it is the notion of an ‘original sin’ which seems inextricably linked with the sexual act. Therefore, these questions below form my thoughts and this essay.

What on earth is Original Sin?

What was the fall of man?

What is an Immaculate Conception? What is being without sin?

Is original sin the act of sexual union?

Is being born in sin relating to the sex that preceded it?

Is sex within marriage not sinful or just less sinful than sex outside of marriage?

Is the child born out of wedlock more sinful than a child born in wedlock?

Why is the act of sex between a man and a woman so sinful, if it is sinful, that is?

Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am starting from Saint Mary, as her story is at the core of the ‘re-uniting of Man with God’ through Christ, this being his reason for being on earth. And it raises the very same question that the ‘fall’ of Adam and Eve does: namely what about the sex thing? Mary was chosen to become the Mother of God because apparently, she accepted the full unity of the flesh with the Word, hence the Immaculate Conception.

To accept full unity of the flesh with the Word is core to Mary’s disposition. In the beginning was The Word then The Word and the uniting of the flesh through Adam. Then there was the fall or the disunity. And here we have the second uniting of the two.

This is heady stuff and without knowing the mystery of God presumably, we have to accept that because Mary was ‘without sin’ she was able to conceive a child from God without having to have sexual union with a man and, after the birth, she remained without sin which implies that she never had sexual union with Joseph. Where does that leave Joseph? In Alan Bennet’s book, Untold Stories he writes in his chapter about art, this:

“The character and situation of Joseph interest me partly because in most paintings of this period, and until the end of the sixteenth century, he has to take a back seat, particularly in paintings of the Adoration. He’s often so much in the background that one wonders if his role in the Holy Family, which is in any case ambiguous, isn’t made more so by his persistence in keeping out of the limelight. It must have been very puzzling. One can imagine a conversation between the Wise Men:
‘Who’s the guy with the grey hair?’
’That’s the husband.’
‘Oh my God!’
And so it must often have been with Joseph, his situation not helped by his always being represented as getting on in years. This is possibly because he’s not mentioned in the New Testament after the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, Jesus then being twelve, and so is presumed to have died before Jesus’ ministry began.

“Even when Joseph is not depicted as old he is often made into such a pathetic and eccentric figure as almost to reflect discredit on the Virgin, who picked him out in the first place. But I suppose that to portray him as an old man or a bit of a fool bolsters the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. After all, there is a sense in which Joseph is cuckolded by the Holy Ghost, a notion which is easier to accept if he fulfils the familiar role of the elderly and foolish husband of a much younger wife. Indeed, in some mystery plays he was presented as a cuckold.

“It’s hardly fair and one feels that he’s rightly a saint, if only because, having to play second fiddle, he needs to be. It’s a situation one sometimes comes across in show business, the famous actress with the supportive spouse; and while Joseph hasn’t quite had to sacrifice carpentry to the demands of his wife’s career, he’s definitely No. 2 in this marriage, a male wife in fact.” (pp481-482).

And you’ve got to have some sympathy with this view. And it is funny. And again, we come back to the ‘sex’ snigger, snigger thing.

Historically, even to innocently question these things would bring shocked looks, blushes and hushes along with a clear indication that you just accept that story as it is at face value or else you can’t be a Christian and most definitely not a Catholic. Probably that approach hasn’t changed much from the Church teachings, or even dealt with outside of the Catholic Church where Mary has a special focus, of course. And indeed, the Archangel Gabriel’s arrival and message to Mary and the Christmas Story is told over and over and is enjoyed and delighted in as part of the Christian psyche and society. We love it. Of itself, without deep analysis, it brings great interest, focus and a consideration of what the story really means to us, even if just once a year. It is surviving, whatever the criticisms or attempts to play it down and it is surviving because it seems that the cumulative psyche is keeping it here. Perhaps we want to know that God hasn’t abandoned us, just in case.

It seems to me that at the very heart of both unions with God we have this issue of sexual intercourse and its implied ‘dirty’ connotations, so it is hard not to notice. But what if these questions are valid, healthy and most certainly not sinful? Why should sex be considered as sinful and dirty and why do we have to extrapolate the central theme of God’s union with man well away from anything as ‘vulgar’ as sexual intercourse? What has sex and being an immaculate conception (i.e.: without sin) got to do with each other? Are they incompatible?

Mary herself was the Immaculate Conception. At a rational level, this implies lots of questioning.
If Mary is the Immaculate Conception, then what about her Mother Saint Anne? If, in order to be pure enough to become the Immaculate Conception one has to be totally untouched and unsullied through the Original Sin and certainly a physical virgin, then it requires some suspension of the fact that Mary’s Mother was married to St. Joachim and bore Mary.

Let us consider the notion of, if St. Anne were absolutely pure enough to accommodate the Immaculate Conception of her daughter, then what about her parents? Saint Anne must have been very pure in Spirit to have borne the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and she still had normal unions with more than one man, although not simultaneously. In fact, Saint Joachim is the Father of Saint Mary. Or was he only her Father on earth, as in Saint Joseph being the Father of Christ on earth? It is the kind of consideration that has throw-backs to each, previous generation in a purely physical sense. Afterwards, St. Anne had two further husbands. This could not have affected her daughter, Mary’s holy status as being the Immaculate Conception. Therefore, why would the fact that Mary might have had a normal, physical, married union with Joseph even after the birth of Christ be so unpalatable? Why would it or could it rock the foundations of the Church’s teachings?

If we know the story of Christmas, we know that Joseph was spoken to by an angel to dispel his fears about Mary having had sexual relations with a man, before their union. I wonder what was said or conveyed to Joseph.

There appears to be a direct implication that if Mary is accepted as having had a normal marriage with Joseph, even after the birth of the Christ, then her status as the Mother of God and Christ’s status as the Son of God is threatened.

Why is this?

St. Augustine is rather clear on his view that Mary is absolutely ‘pure’. He is equally clear that Mary remained pure after the birth of Christ and by this he means that she never had sexual intercourse with Saint Joseph. Augustine uses the word “concupiscence” which relates to desire. Apparently, she and Joseph lived together as Man and Wife in a purely spiritual union.

Why is it so important that the Blessed Virgin Mary is proposed as having always been a physical virgin during her entire life on earth, whilst being married to Joseph and having her own family?

In some reflections of the saints in a compilation by John Rotelle, on the Virgin Mary, it is abundantly clear that they all perceive Mary to have been and to have remained a physical Virgin for the rest of her life, even after Jesus was born. These writers are all men I should add and I add this for good reason. St. Thomas of Villanove (1486-1555) an Augustinian bishop encapsulates the conception of Jesus with: “I beg you, Virgin: tell us yourself how you conceived with your virginity unimpaired and gave birth with your virginity intact.”.

And John Rotelle (compiler of the saints’ views) encapsulates the continued physical virgin state of Mary with this: “Mary was truly the spouse of Joseph, and she is therefore proposed to all married people as a model. Her marriage to Joseph did not indeed involve bodily union, but it did involve the far closer union of souls. God arranged things in this manner so that Christian spouses might realise that ‘the more they learn to imitate the parents of Christ, the closer will be their union with the members of Christ’. Thus, while never tiring of exalting Mary’s ineffable privilege of virginity combined with motherhood, Augustine sees in her transcendent vocation an exhortation to those Christians who are called to marriage: Let them, like Mary, aim at what is noblest and most exalted in that state!”.

Mary’s ‘other children’ were not hers, they were cousins, apparently. As the word for ‘brothers’ can be used in its wider sense of ‘cousins’; consider the family of Jesus who are concerned about their ‘lost son’, they thought that he was mad. (Mark 3.21). So, sometimes we are asked to believe that Jesus had no brothers and sisters and that he lived alone with his parents in Nazareth with parents who had no physical intercourse, but existed in a subliminal state of spiritual union if that is what is implied by St. Augustine’s “..exalted state..”, and that the other relations were the issue of his Mother’s and Father’s families.

For all our contemporary worldliness and acceptance of so many things not long ago rejected as bad and even illegal, we still somehow have the same mediaeval, narrow, archaic approach to the notion of a woman who has had sexual intercourse being somehow ‘dirty’.

In our modern, worldly sense, the purity of a woman is still perceived to be that of a physical virgin and the notion that once she has been sullied by having had sex with a man, colours our view of the status of women anywhere in the world. In our modern world, a ‘loose’ woman is considered a ‘slut’. There are more disparaging words to describe women than there are for men. Any woman who has had sex outside of the holy estate of marriage is considered sullied. More readily acceptable is a man “sowing his wild oats” but if he does so, then there are women with whom he sowed his oats who are now sullied and cannot be ‘pure’, ever, if we follow this logic. These notions might be more to do with pride and primogeniture and the man knowing that the child a woman bore was his, rather than a sober view on the status of the woman. The word for a man whose wife has committed adultery is ‘cuckold’, which is highly ignominious. But there is no word for the woman whose husband has committed adultery. This is no argument for or against feminism it is a recognition of the status of men and women.

But these notions can certainly serve to alienate the vast majority of modern men and women from the idea of a life with or in God, because of our more forward thinking modern values and principles; in our cultures we are relatively rather ‘free and easy’ about the way to live our lives and tend to accept multiple partners, marriages or not. No wonder then that many of us feel isolated from the narrow interpretation of the relationship between a man and a woman, from the Church; we are breaking the rules all the time and we are becoming even more isolated and distinct from the Church’s ‘way’.

Yet our culture tends also to be diverse and easy going or accepting in terms of couples living together without getting married and homosexual unions at a state legislature level and this consideration is a modern debate within the Church of England itself, so a contemporary ‘soul searching’ is going on in the Church and is followed by Government and media to derive our modern values. Yet still we have not moved forward on the concept of a woman’s purity being utterly related to her having had sexual intercourse. Without sexual intercourse we cannot exist and yet it is treated as some kind of ‘necessary evil’ or ‘sin’ because we are too ‘sinful’ to conceive without the aid of a man and a ‘dirty’ act. We know that rape cases in courts tend to look to the woman who has been abused to defend herself first; she should not have dressed in such a way, etc.

We are rather astonishingly narrow in this regard whilst able to allow for equal rights for homosexuals and we won’t even go to the issue of that physical sexual union here; yet people are honest enough not to trudge to Church and offer their participation in their ‘sinful’ states being clearly impure and having neither notion nor desire to follow the examples apparently set by St. Mary and St. Joseph. Such honesty and yet left out of the Church. It seems a contradiction; excluded for being honest.

And now we come to the central subject of the Da Vinci code.

Saint Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute, according to Pope Gregory, or she was ‘the woman who was a sinner’ and she became a disciple of Christ. She was with Saint Mary, His Mother, at the crucifixion. When they went to the Garden of Gethsemene to anoint his body with herbs they couldn’t find his body, but Mary Magdalene became the first human witness to his physical resurrection. As to why it was important for Mary of Magdala to be portrayed as a prostitute by Pope Gregory or as to why she had to be ‘the woman who was a sinner’ we would have to look at the political and social infrastructure of Palestine at the time of Christ and in later centuries in relation to the treatment of women. Whether Mary of Magdala was or was not a prostitute is to me utterly outside of the scope or needs of our understanding here. In other words if Mary was a prostitute or if Mary was not a prostitute it makes no difference whatsoever to understanding the truth of the Immaculate Conceptions. Where it does help us is in again witnessing the apparent need to label a woman not only of Christ’s time but one who was his and his other disciples’ peer, with a role and or disparaging term and which is equally used in modern times as the name of a woman who solicits sex and as a derisory term for a woman who is judged to be loose with her favours. And it helps us in examining the relationship between the two Marys. Therein lie the real issues.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the Mother of Christ were two women so close to Jesus that it would be begging a suspension of belief if they did not communicate and go about with each other. Especially the visit to the garden to anoint the body shows that they were together in their intent; they went there together in their urgent task to do what was required. Imagine for a moment these two women in our modern, soap opera orientated world which thrives on gossip and spectacular happenings with ‘ordinary’ people, who have their own cult ‘celebrity’ status almost as soon as they get in the popular soaps.

Imagine a woman, Mary the Mother of Christ, so far removed from the real, material world then if she had lived only in a spiritual union with her husband, having just one child to care for in a working class town where large families would have been the norm. They would have been not only ‘odd’ but clearly utterly different from their neighbours. It beggars belief, but if we allow for this and see Mary as having had this slightly elevated, dreamy life on the streets of Nazareth because she was so ‘above’ everyone else, can you imagine her discussing, grieving and planning things with Mary of Magdala, a woman of the world, perhaps of the street and with perspectives so based on the hard facts of life on earth and the reality of relationships at an intimately physical level? I suppose that you could argue that Mary of Magdala had become so spiritual and enlightened by this time that her whole perspectives on life had changed and that she had changed so fundamentally that she could go about with Mary the Mother of Christ. But I wouldn’t argue this. Rather, I would argue that both women were women of the world in the very real sense of understanding the social context, the politics, the human condition as it really is, the consequent emotions including fear and disbelief and the ultimate betrayal leading to the trial, the humiliation of and the death of Jesus. The women remained whilst the men fled. They were constant and they did not go away; rather, they faced the consequences. And the two Marys faced the consequences together.

The story of the Da Vinci code is that Mary Magadalen bore a child to Christ and that there is a huge puzzle to work this out. It is a novel and it is well imagined. As it happens, Dan Brown might well have got some of his resource or ideas from a book published in 1996: “The Tomb of God. The Body of Jesus and the solution to a 2000 year old mystery” by Andrews & Schellenberger. This is a factual account of their searching for the implications of the mystery of a place in France and who might be buried there. They use archaeology, theology, geometry, mathematics and the clues through the centuries to pursue this aim which ultimately includes Leonardo da Vinci (but not the painting The Last Supper). Its valuable contribution to history, politics, mediaeval notions and the story of what might have happened to Mary Magdalene and to Jesus after the crucifixion is extremely interesting and, they conclude, absolutely proven. The book asserts as fact, as does Dan Brown in fiction, that there was a physical union between Jesus and Mary. I wonder if our inability to perceive a close relationship between a woman and a man without some kind of sexual union lies at the basis of this too. I have met in my life both women and men who do not seek a sexual union with someone of the opposite sex. The Dalai Lama is completely absorbed in his role on earth to take care of Tibet, Tibetans and his own spiritual development, he seeks no physical union. Christ’s mission on earth was all consuming and he had much work to do, and his message had to be delivered to the world. The trial and the crucifixion took place at an early stage in his life and like any great teacher or mystic, it is likely that he was completely absorbed in this. Also, amongst his followers he was loved, adored and respected and it is highly unlikely that a relationship with a woman in which they were engaged in a physical sexual union would have been conducive to this, let alone the social prohibitions of the time. If our narrow human view is that there must have been ‘something’ going on then we are again back to the base feelings which drive our media and soap operas. But, whatever the truth of the situation, the personal relationship between two people is between them and perhaps our constant need to find the weakness and desire in others to gape at, ridicule or bring down to ‘our level’ or a ‘base level’ or just ‘down to earth’ as the common saying goes, is to find the human tendency to debase and deride that which is inherently beautiful. If we accept that the modern soaps are written to appeal to the lowest common denominators in people, by actively stirring gossip-orientated narrowness and base instincts, we can really understand how such plays as ‘The Crucible’ and stories like the film ‘Ryan’s Daughter’ deal well with the baseness of man and document that sad, narrow and ignorant state without inner reflection and enlightenment.

Years’ ago, Scarlatti’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” was considered so sacriligious that it was widely condemned, even with opposition from the Houses of Parliament in England. This story examined what might have happened if Christ had survived the Cross and married and so on; I found it a harrowing film to watch but never found its content remotely sacriligious because it was a story about ‘what if’ and it examined this very well and managed, I thought, to bring the human experience so close to God that it was extremely holy in its approach.

So what am I talking about and what is the real issue? The real issue is that the focus is on sex and whether Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene and, indeed, whether Mary the Mother of Jesus had sex with Joseph, her husband.

It seems that if Mary, the Mother of Jesus, did have a normal, married life also in the physical sense with St. Joseph, then the church will ‘fall down’. I do not understand why it would fall down though, but it seems that great lengths are gone to, to preserve the absolute ‘purity’ of Mary, the Mother of Jesus in a physical sense over the years since the birth of Jesus within the teachings of the Church. Apparently, if Mary did have a normal married relationship with Joseph this would imply that she was no longer pure. In contrast, Mary Magdalen’s background is easily given a singularly apparently ‘impure’ slant in order to welcome the masses of sinners we can surmise as being not beyond hope. It is a nice political way of giving hope to the masses by using Mary Magdalen in this way whilst securely keeping Mary and Joseph well and truly out of the normality on earth sphere, and we can admire its intent.

But, whether Mary of Magdala was or was not a prostitute, it is important to realise that there were prostitutes in the time of Christ as there are today and what I am implying is that they – or anyone else - is equally worthy of the love of God irrespective of whether they change their ways or not. If I equally assert that we owe each other simple respect, this means that whoever you come across in life, irrespective of his or her situation, you should afford them respect. The modern context then, is the same as the ancient and through this clear commonality, we can ably draw strands and comparisons to consider the fundamental truths.

If the intent of the Church is to defend the physical purity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus then this leads us to a very important and in my view, sinister, reasoning. Why should we or anyone reject the notion of Mary having borne Jesus as the Son of God as the Immaculate Conception, be incompatible with leading a normal life on earth and having a proper, married union with Joseph, afterwards? Why would this equally detract from Mary herself being the Immaculate Conception?

The very root of the teachings of Christ is with the ordinary, everyday lives of people in their various social hierarchies and jobs. Married or unmarried, tax collector, house wife, prostitute or fisherman or even Samaritan or Roman soldier, no one was beyond the scope of Christ’s teachings and message about the reality of God and the Kingdom of which he spoke. He embraced the very soul of man by speaking to him of very ordinary, every day things and within the context of women being subjugated in the social structures of the day. He ignored the social conventions of the day by attributing equal respect, status (call it what you will ) to women and to men. He was not constrained by the social directives of the day. The story of his asking the crowd wishing to stone the adulteress who amongst them was without sin is extremely enlightening. Would an adulterer be willing to place himself in the same position as the woman?

Similarly, in our modern lives we are unfortunately witnessing not the increasing respect of men for women, as a whole person, but its opposite in its tendency to be more highly focused on the one facet of physical, sexual intercourse for its own sake. I am not inferring that this is an issue exclusively about male values, it is an issue about the cumulative social values of men and women.

Recent articles (see bibliography below) in the news suggest that the attitude of men to using women for having sex, by paying them for this service, is increasing. The number of men paying women for sex has nearly doubled in a decade, UK research suggested in December 2005 published findings on surveys of 11,000 British adults between 1990 and 2000. Rising divorce rates, sex tourism and increasing availability of commercial sex are blamed by the Sexually Transmitted Infections journal.

The lead author (The study authors are from Imperial and University College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the National Centre for Social Research) Dr Helen Ward said there were many reasons why more men were paying for sex. "There has been a more liberal attitude towards commercial sex and increasing commercialisation of sex. Lads magazines are bombarded with images. There are more men with money and more women looking for this type of work." Peter Baker, of the Men's Health Forum, said that "Many people will be surprised by the relatively large numbers of men who are willing to pay for sex. But it's not so surprising in the context of social trends - women are increasingly sexualised in the media, sex phone lines are routinely advertised in the back of magazines and phone boxes...and divorce and separations are on the rise."

The modern world, let’s take our own UK as a start, distinguishes between the Church goers and those who don’t. It is as if those of us who go to Church accept ‘blindly’ the faith and therefore must act accordingly and make jam for the bazaars and do charity work etc. and those of us who don’t go to Church, simply take our chances elsewhere and perhaps embrace other teachings of spirituality or not, and a ‘good’ life can be led without going to Church anyway. People might have a ‘healthy respect’ for the holy in that they keep their reverent distance or they might openly disregard the teachings of the Church considering it out of date and not related to current life, an important one being the current debate about sexual behaviour in the less developed world and the AIDS crises and the use of condoms, or not and the Catholic church’s stance on this important issue.

It seems to me that underneath the insistence that Saint Mary remained a physical virgin all of her earthly days or at least for the time before marrying Saint Joseph, is the despising of ‘ordinary’ women. There are so many phrases related to the damning and hate of women including the astonishing, but hilarious, American “Mother Fucker” and “slut” and many more of course, that we need to look more carefully at our human, ego-driven facet of damning any woman who has had sex whether inside of our outside of a marriage. And then anyone borne of a woman is immediately in sin because of the sex. Good grief.

There has to be something missing. We are unable to go to Church for guidance and education because we know that we do not meet their stipulations for entry; we cannot meet their ‘ideals’ we do not make the grade and, anyway, services can be boring, cold and strained and there are many other things we could be doing, rather than standing in front of an altar with some faint hope that we will be ‘let off’ if we just turn up at the appointed time on a Sunday. The spiritual life, as an integral part of our being perhaps equally needy of development is mostly ignored in our general media and it is often ignored inside the Church too.

So how do we account for the fact that Lourdes is one of the great pilgrimages of the Christian world in a secular age? Whilst Catholic congregations decline across Europe the number of people going to Lourdes is actually increasing. Six million people go per year which is said to be more than visit Mecca. What on earth can these seemingly mutually exclusive indicators be telling us? It is telling us that people are seeking help, love and forgiveness from God and that their souls and spirits are stirred enough to make the journey, the inner and outer one. They are seeking the development of their spirituality in the context of their real lives not in the context of some ideal that they cannot possibly match.

Why are the Churches so unwelcoming, why are we not compelled to go there for the purpose of development, meeting other like minded people and learning more about what the messages, the gospels actually mean to us in our lives right now? What is it about the formula offered in mainstream education or Church sermons or structure that is so unattractive? It doesn’t go forward, that is what. We are stuck in a staid, ritualistic exercise and it has become not only boring but it is ignoring the central focus of Christianity: the spiritual being in all of us. Yes, you have the Christmas story, the Communnion, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascencion around which pivots the Church calendar but the point of the calendar and the sacraments are reminders and for the development of our spirituality; these activities and sacraments are not ends in themselves.

If the Churches do not grasp the contemporary desire, need and thirst for the spirituality of Christianity, then why even be surprised that people just stop attending Church as part of their lives? In the past, it has perhaps been sufficient for societies that were focused in their cottage industries or post-revolution industries as it provided a central and different focus on life from the very dreary working conditions and harsh, difficult living. It was enough to offer the Church assembly,the family life, the colourful ceremonies, the groups of bands and crafts and the wonderful stories for reflection which might be then pursued by those wanting or able to read more in their own time, indeed developing their own spirituality then, because there were no other distractions in their lives. In our time, people are far more sophisticated, not necessarily better educated, are aware of the entire world through the media and the internet and absorb concepts and notions from other cultures, ideas that are out of the ordinary. Even if not so sophisticated, we dwell on soap operas and game shows for excitement and entertainment.

There are not only innumerable distractions to take away any focus on the Church life but there is really no competition from it at all. Should the Church wake up to the contemporary reality of having to address life as it is, not as it should be? Remember that Christ told Peter that he had come for all people, at Peter’s exasperation that Christ should mix in ‘undesirable’ social circles.

Does the Church shun the idea of spirituality? The core elements of all of the key stories including the Christmas story and the life of Christ are utterly spiritual.

The church does not address spirituality and it doesn’t address the notion of virginity, sex and the virgin birth. It is so closely linked to the purity of the flesh that it is not explored. If the aspects of virginity, sex and the virgin birth are not explored, we cannot embrace the spirituality inherent here. The question is why these aspects seem to be singularly related to the physical and sexual intercourse. What if these aspects are actually related to the deepest part of our being; the soul? What if they do not relate to the physical at all?

We are three parts as reflected in the Holy Trinity: Soul, Spirit and Physical. We divorce our tri-being to suggest that the Church on earth is subject to the notion of absolute physical purity. Surely such narrow reasoning is the inhibitor of the spirit, because the soul is ignored. If the soul is ignored, it cannot inform the spirit. The soul belongs to God. The spirit is who we are and we seek to be led by the soul back to God. Hence the reunion of the spirit and the soul. If Mary’s state of being enabled her soul to magnify the Lord, it means that she was in complete union with God. The implication is spiritual and soulful and the third part, the physical, is our outer shell. The shell can become damaged and worn and used, it can be abused and caressed and its effects will be felt in our souls. But even if you have worked as a prostitute or had five husbands and numerous lovers you are as worthy of the love of God, through the soul, than anyone else who is celibate and prurient. If we believe that our physical actions and encumbrances are permanently damning, then we close the door on proper union with God. Herein lies the guilt and here, also, lies our shadow because we will take evasive action to hide or justify our un-Godly behaviour and so we divorce the physical from the spirit and the soul is wounded.

Healing is the union of the three parts so we can better recognise the role that spirituality has to play in teaching us the way forward, or the way back to God. This is what Mary signified with the conception of Christ. He was the immaculate conception then; it was perfectly balanced. When Mary was conceived, even with parents who had sexual intercourse, she was equally immaculately conceived because the balance of the three parts was in union, communion with God.

So sex really isn’t the issue at all. If the Church is not dispelling that notion it is not helping the spiritual development of anyone and everyone, whatever their state of being.

And it helps to continue the prejudice of male versus female cultures, the notion of 'feminism' and certainly the continual disparaging of women for what? For having led Adam to sin and fall from grace? Why is this taken to mean that she led him astray and therefore, woman is the one to be blamed? But it takes only a superficial look at many of our cultures to see that she is treated as such.

An interesting etymology is of the kerchief: “ KERCHIEF (Triangle Scarf), mentioned only in Ezek. 13:18, 21, as an article of apparel or ornament applied to the head of the idolatrous women of Israel. The precise meaning of the word is uncertain. It appears to have been a long loose shawl, such as Oriental women wrap themselves in (Ruth 3:15; Isa. 3:22). Some think that it was a long veil or head-dress, denoting by its form the position of those who wore it.”

Could it be that the head scarf currently used by Islam and some Jewish women, is a direct reference to the ‘shame’ of Eve? Eve led Adam astray – away from God to the Devil (a self-declared God) so was she an idolatrous woman? Did she really do that? Even Basilea Schlink writes that: “Mary’s Yes is all the greater when measured against Eve’s No. We are indebted to Mary that God was able to use her Yes to cancel the disobedience of Eve, for through Mary the Saviour was born for us.”

Is this why women are subject to restrictions in cultures which ensure that their physical bodies are entirely covered so that their femininity may not ‘tempt’ a man? Inside the privacy of her marriage in ‘tempting’ her man, whilst she is given the ‘respect’ of the culture by doing this only inside the house and the marriage, is she still condemned for having tempted him to sin in the flesh anyway? Why would we believe that the original sin of Adam and Eve was that Eve enticed Adam to have sex ? If Eve was taken out of Adam, from his rib, it rather more implies that the feminine and the masculine reside within and of each other. The fall from grace is the recognition of our own will and the desire to follow it, not that of God’s.

Even without knowing the answers to all of these questions it is clearly a spiritual dimension which is going to bring the kind of reflection, prayer and meditation into the mysticism of these events. Approaching it from the purely physical angle with ritual just a representation of the spiritual, is not enough. We do not have to know all of the answers – how can we if the universe is infinite and there is so much that we are not capable of grasping? But the way we approach it is an end in itself; it will provide our development towards wholeness, or union with God. That is spirituality.

Bibliography

Mary’s Yes. Readings on Mary Through the Ages, edited and compiled by John Rotelle OSA, 1988,first published 1989,
Collins Liturgical Publications, 8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA ISBN 0-00-599170-6

The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christianity, Gerd Theissen (Professor of New Testament in the University of Bonn), Munich 1977.
Translation by John Bowden, 1978. First published in English in 1978, SCM Press Ltd, 58 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1

The Blessing of the Holy Spirit, J. E. Fison, Bishop of Salisbury. First published in 1950, this edition first published in 1965, Libra books by Darton, Longman & Todd Limited, 64 Chiswick High Road, London W4

Mary, The Mother of Jesus. Basilea Schlink. Maria, der Weg der Mutter des Herrn. First German edition, 1960, First British edition, 1986 published by Marshall Morgan and Scott Publications Ltd, Marshall Pickering, 3 Beggarwood Lane, Basingstoke, Hants, RG23 7LP, ISBN 0-551-01368-0

Untold Stories, Alan Bennett, 2005, Faber and Faber
Internet references:
Saint Anne. http://www.byzantines.net/saints/st%20anne.htm#Brief%20History
“Twice as Many Men pay for Sex” BBC Article, December, 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4482970.stm

2007-04-04T05:25:00.000-07:00

help.

My son wrote this about my intent.

He is probably right.

the white parasol

moved

Dear Son, Love Dad (© 2007 Trevor Dobson))

Visualization for the Self (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

The Fig Leaf (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Knowledge is...(© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

What Prayer Is (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

A Beautiful Prayer (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

Sacred Tools(© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

Love (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

Channelling Thoughts of Ann (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmit)

Womb-Man (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

The Power of Not Quite There Yet (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

What is politics about? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Channellings (© 2008 “Mrs. Overall” – Ann Emmitt)

Violence be-Gooded (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Prejudice (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Power of the Not Quite There Yet? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

A Magpie story (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

What is Truth? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

A Saint is A Sinner Who Falls A Hundred Times a Day (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Western Values (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Immigrants in Britain (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Life would be good if only...(© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Who is my neighbour? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

What do we want to see? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

What keeps us living the lie? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

You do not have to change (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

The Lie is, the Truth is (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Sticks and Stones (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

What does the Da Vinci Code have to do with the Church, Sex and Spirituality? (© 2008 Eileen Baker)

Help me a man is controlling me (© 2008 Thomas de Bruin)