But I wanted to come by to share a hymn that I am loving at the moment. (When I come upon a song that grabs me I tend to thrash it for a while …. and this is one of my latest on repeat. I am a fan of Jess Ray.) The second stanza seems apt for Easter. So, Happy Easter folks - may it be full of joy in reflecting on what Christ has done for you, grace and peace for you.

This post is mostly just for fun, and I drew the line at calling it the transcendence of cats, but bear with me. It is in part inspired by a talk/book launch I went to at the National Library last week, where Susannah Fullerton spoke on her new book Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them. I was going to resist the purchasing of another book at that event, but the talk was so interesting that I succumbed, as it includes a good splash of history and literary biography of writers of interest. So of course I then had the book it signed for my furred companions.

As many readers will know, during 2023 I acquired two cats, Ebenezer at six years old, and Chesterton as a kitten. They have certainly brought curiosity and affection to my life. Right from the beginning I said that having these felines in my house felt a little like I was living with creatures from another dimension, as they padded silently around my house in the night, reacting to things I couldn’t detect. Cats can hear things humans can’t hear (I believe they can even hear an octave higher than dogs), smell things humans can’t smell and even see things, especially at night, that humans can’t see. They have very fast reaction times because their visual frame rate is so much higher than humans.

Throughout history cats have been viewed as somewhat otherworldly - being considered spiritual and intuitive and able to see into other dimensions. People have believed they could guard homes against negative energies and unseen spirits, seemingly interpreted from the way they will fixate on or hiss at empty spaces. (Having read that idea in searching around before writing this post, I thought about the times that Ebenezer has walked into the room and hissed for no reason, and now I am wondering …)

Cats are also thought to promote healing, reduce stress and aid in recovery from physical or emotional distress. Curiously there is some science in this as the frequency at which cats purr does actually have physical healing properties and can even increase human bone density.

As we’re probably all aware cats were at one time considered the “familiars” of witches (and single women who kept cats were often believed therefore to be witches - so watch this space ha ha). They were thought to indicate the presence of evil - either of the devil himself or a witch in disguise. This conflicts of course with the notion that they can ward off negative energies and unseen spirits, so it’s a choose your own understanding of that one.

Cats are generally a little enigmatic and mysterious, with a good intuition. They move around the house quietly, not being very outwardly expressive, with an air of independence and confidence, and it is not easy to get them do something they don’t want to (especially not my Ebenezer!). Yet every now and then they reveal just how observant and intelligent they are in some surprising response.

So, without taking any of this too seriously, I think one of the many benefits of cats in my life is realising that other of God’s creatures we inhabit this globe with may have very different perceptual experiences of it (which we can never really confirm obviously as we can’t get inside a cat’s experience - did you know there is a famous philosophy paper by Thomas Nagel called “What is it like to be a bat?”). They are reminders to me that there is more going on in the world than simply what I can perceive, though what exactly that is may be still open to question.

(If you are looking for something a little more serious to read, this post Bored with the Miracle from Desert and Fire is a fitting and beautiful follow on from my previous one.)

There are times when I wonder what it was I once wrote about so regularly on this here humble blog, as inspiration or inclination now fails me for long stretches at a time. It is perhaps at least partly true that the more you write the more you then have to write about, so then the longer you stop, the less there seems to be to say. In pondering this and in wanting to keep the art of writing alive I returned to the title of this blog: “something this foggy day”, a line from Christina Rossetti’s poem Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets, which is followed by the line (all this used to be in my blog header) “a something which is neither of this fog nor of today”. It is the idea that ties together almost all the themes of this blog - that “something” that comes to us and lifts us out of this time and this day and the fog we find ourselves in, die Sehnsucht that grips us and feels like a homesickness, but also feels like a longing for a far country we have never visited, the beauty that enraptures, the goodness that speaks to us of grander ways of living and truth that exists beyond, the thin places where heaven and earth seem to come close, the glimmers of light beyond … all of them in some ways ‘signals of transcendence’, to steal the title from Os Guinness.

So, I thought going forward I would simply continue as I begun and post of little moments of transcendence, whatever they happen to be - small beauties and wonders, books and music that lift me out of here and now, insights that point above and beyond. There are times in life when one has to look harder to see them. At the moment I find myself living alone in a somewhat characterless unit, catching a bus and taking an elevator to my desk behind office partitions, living a life I never dreamed or imagined would be mine, which I confess I find at times disappointing and soul-destroying. But then I guess the whole point of a signal of transcendence is that it raises one’s gaze beyond where they currently are, which becomes almost irrelevant, so I will keep my senses open.

So, I recently took a deep dive into the books of Claire Keegan. I am not sure how I managed to miss this author from some years until recently actually, but her name was mentioned in podcast about writing, so I took note. I didn’t find her works in any second hand stores, which is often a good way to test whether one will like an author or not as modern fiction is a risk, so I added them to a Christmas list, and received Foster and Small Things Like These. These are only short works, so for a short time on Christmas Day and Boxing Day I was completely transported out of the fog and taken beyond myself as I read. Without wanting to spoil the story, I loved this portion from Small Things Like These, where it is taking a courageous action to assist another human in their suffering, that is the something this foggy day:

As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping on another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart. Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing? Some part of him, whatever it could be called - was there any name for it? - was going wild, he knew. The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this …

You would not regret reading this book, which is on all the lists I have since seen of the greatest books (so far) of this century. I should sound a warning though, that while the two books above are stunningly beautiful and heart-enlarging, the stories in Antarctica I found to be quite deeply disturbing. Each of them read to me as a cautionary tale of the potential consequences of doing a wrong thing. So Late in the Day was less disturbing, also less beautiful than the others, but worth reading for what it showed of the human condition. The Forester’s Daughter was similar. I am yet to read Walk the Blue Fields, and am looking forward to that.

*These foggy pictures were taken on a fantastic six-day walk I did last year along the Overland Track in Tasmania, where there were definitely ‘somethings’. I will share more photos.

I like to have a word of a phrase for a year, if I can actually find a suitable one. I was thinking about this one day last week, as one does in early January, and happened upon a paragraph about shalom (in commentary on Acts 10:36). This paragraph was describing shalom as being so much more all encompassing than peace … Now, I have long known about the word shalom as the Hebrew word for peace, but the idea that it meant something fuller and deeper and above and beyond that sent me off down a rabbit hole, and when I emerged from this hole I decided it could be my word for the year. (I’m not trying to appropriate anything especially Jewish, as I know that is currently a hot button, but I am very happy to appropriate a biblical concept all the same.)

So, a quick google search gave me pieces of the below description of Shalom:

Shalom (שׁלום) is a deep Hebrew word meaning far more than simple “peace,” encompassing wholeness, completeness, well-being, harmony, health, prosperity, and tranquility, a state of flourishing where all parts of life – spiritual, physical, and social – are in right relationship and fully functional, reflecting God’s intended order. It’s … not just the absence of conflict, but the presence of thriving goodness.

• Root meaning: Derived from the Hebrew root shalem, meaning to be complete, perfect, or whole, with no parts missing.

• Beyond “Peace”: It’s a rich state of universal flourishing, justice, and delight, involving satisfied needs and fruitful use of gifts, a concept of how things ought to be - of being sound, healthy and integrated.

• Active & Passive: It can be a state of being (inner serenity) or an active pursuit, requiring work to bring repair and wholeness to broken situations, individuals.

• Biblical Significance: In the Bible, it refers to a cosmic principle and divine attribute, a state of alignment (or of being in right relationship) with God, others, and oneself, as exemplified by Jesus saying “Peace be with you” (Shalom Aleichem).

“Thriving goodness” is an appealing new year’s resolution to me. I’m not chasing after prosperity in any earthly sense, and Lord knows I’ve learnt that you have limited control over your external circumstances (and they certainly won’t always be as peace-inducing as in my photo above), but it’s more of the inner tranquility and well-being that dispels angst and over-analysing and feeling persistently harried in the background that I am after. Ultimately I believe shalom flows from a deep trust in the love and character of God, that he is working all things as he sees best so I can open my hands and don’t need to strive or worry about situations or misunderstandings or failed opportunities … Well, that and perhaps a little proper rest every now and then.

I could also bring a little more shalom into my home environment with a little decluttering and cleaning up more after myself so that I’m not then feeling stressed and disorganised by my own mess and chaos, and by living a little more intentionally in preparation and use of my time. Those are some of my more practical ideas I want to implement and I am sure I will think of many more as the year goes by.

If any readers (if there are any still hanging on out there) have a word or phrase or quote they choose for a new year I’d love to hear those also …

Hellebore: Such a dark and unattractive word for a bloom so bright and lovely; a flower that bears light in the winter gloom and brings much fascination to a garden bed. I’ve learnt recently that hell is the German word for bright, which I shall never make my peace with, but perhaps the Germans understand this flower.

I asked google why this awful name and was informed it originates from Greek, a combination of meaning ‘to injure or destroy’ and ‘food’ and ‘reflects the plants toxic nature’. So, they are toxic if you eat them, if you see a thing of beauty and attempt to make it useful to you.

But to name this flower for a toxic nature was a grievous error. They are an antidote to the world’s toxicity. Pay attention to flowers that bloom in winter, and many toxic things fade back to hell, where they belong.

And yet, in the realm of folklore, hellebores were also believed to possess protective powers, warding off malevolent spirits, repelling evil and sorcery. I am no believer in superstition, but pleased all the same to have a row of them as a barricade against harm along the front of my house.

Hellebores also thrive in the shade, which is why planted them along a southern wall. All things don’t need to dance in the sun to flourish. They hang their heads and keep the full extent of their beauty hidden from those who don’t bend down and gently lift them. I respect and honour them for this.

Hello friends. Here I am again and it is well into 2025 already and I have nothing to say for myself but that life goes on. A recent reminder of a quote from George MacDonald has been enough to bring me back for a little post though. I came upon it in this substack, which you might want to read if a post called ‘Eternal Longings of the Human Soul’ reaches for you. I have long been under the spell of George MacDonald, and he is an author I turn to when I need to stoke my soul alive.

As well as what that substack post says about the ache we all feel and whether it points to any reality beyond what we experience, I found the quote below to say something also to the age old dilemma of human suffering also, which I have heard anew from several sources of late. The more I read and hear the more it seems that no theologian or philosopher has ever found an answer that satisfies all the questions people will go on asking, and there is many a sinking ship in the world around me at present, both in global affairs and in the personal lives of people I know. But to say that the whisper of that far off song, from somewhere that we sense to be infinitely beautiful, though we catch it only intermittently on the wind, is enough to be able to bear the cries from drowning ships, is something I find to be somehow true (while as yet having no explanation for and grieving the sinking ships). It probably won’t satisfy the philosophers, but the song has indeed been “quite enough” for those who have heard it.

I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.’

~ George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton Vesalius in Zante

To create or reflect light is another raison de’être of this here Substack - though admittedly not every post reaches it - so I’m storing this quote. It came back again recently in his weekly compilation but this post by Austin Kleon was a good reminder (excuse the language).

I have a tiny patch of dirt along the back fence of my otherwise paved courtyard, and there grows an evergreen magnolia, which, rarely enough to add to the delight when it does, flowers as in this photo, and my neighbours enjoy it too.

One reason for the existence of this blog is to serve as my ‘Commonplace book’, which is what folks once called the book in which they copied appealing quotes or stored sentimental paraphernalia they gathered along the way. To that end I post snippets of writing that moves me, or which is simply great writing. So I was listening to the Fully Alive podcast again in the car the other day and Elizabeth Oldfield was interviewing Rod Dreher (of The Benedictine Option fame) about his new book on re-enchanting the word, called Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age.  Towards the end of the podcast Oldfield quotes from a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor called A Time to Keep Silence, written in 1953.

The quote connects nicely to my previous post on spiritual formation. It’s only about a decade or so ago that I was exposed to the Anglican Prayer Book, which had been somewhat disdained by my earlier evangelical upbringing, but which I have since found to be a source of great riches, and which has certainly been a part of the spiritual formation of those who read it for centuries. The quote is about compline, the lullaby of the liturgy as Oldfield called it, or short night prayer before bed, and I just loved it. We can get so benumbed and materialist here in the West, that we forget what we are genuinely up against and how precarious our daily safety can be:

Compline, the office that finishes the monastic day, belongs more than any of them to the world of the mediæval church. Only one lamp is lighted, enough for the monk who reads aloud from the Rule of St. Benedict … The faces of the seated monks are hidden in their hoods, their heads are bowed; and they themselves are only just discernible under the accumulation of shadows ... The whole service is a kind of precautionary exorcism of the terrors of the night, a warding-off of the powers of darkness, each word throwing up a barrier or shooting home a bolt against the prowling regions of the Evil One …
...
One by one the keys turn in the wards, the portcullises fall, the invisible drawbridges touch the battlements …
 ...
The windows are barred against the lurking incubus, the pre-eighth-century iambic dimeters seal up any remaining loophole against the invasion of the hovering succubi …

Turn the lights down and read it dramatically. Doesn’t it just make you shiver, and also strangely rejoice in the power of goodness fighting against the darkness?!

I am probably not unusual in this feature, but I am of a sort who, when I find a song that moves me, I have to listen to it over and over for a time, until I have completely imbibed it. I will skip over the other songs on the album, repeating that one song until I am sufficiently saturated, then I can enjoy the rest of the album. Recently I realised that I enjoy Taylor Leonhard’s most recent album Hold Still but did not have any others, so I found her 2017 album River House, and quickly my current obsession became the song Would You Be Well. Even the title got me. And lyrics are very important to me in songs. Some people enjoy songs and barely notice or care about the lyrics; I am not one of those. But I do also need to like the tune, which I do here.

As someone who walks though life largely alone, and does not share most of my personal life with anyone (simply because I do not have good local friends who are available for such a thing and am not one for long phone calls - and my sisters are quite different to me and each live in different states and are both married with their own lives to work through), I have to work at times to process things and stay somewhere in the centre of the path. But I think being “well”, in a spiritual and psychological sense, is a life-long endeavour for us all - to not unravel here or get a little unhinged there or react badly to this or be excessively stressed over that, to remind ourselves what is above and beyond all the large and small disturbances of this life.

Lately I have been pondering “spiritual formation” and how it is not something that only benefits or is necessary for those who are considering a vocation in ministry, which is how I know it in my context, but is for all of us. Apparently this idea has a Catholic origin, so if you’re wondering what I mean, a quick google gave me this definition from Regent University: "spiritual formation is the ongoing process where believers learn and develop right relationships with God, self, and others as they are formed spiritually to act and behave in Christ-likeness." (Nothing so Catholic about that!) So I pause on occasion and ask myself what I am doing for my spiritual formation in how I spend my time. It has been a useful prompt and is, I believe, directly correlated to keeping “well”.

But without further ado, here is the song. Normally I am a little angsty about songs written from God’s point of view, as that is a risky theological undertaking. But this one is simple and it works for me. It doesn’t even offer solutions, it simply reminds us where to go. 

Would you be well

Would you be well from crushing anxiety
And live inside a peace you can't understand?
Would you be free from all that entangles you
Trade what you couldn't do for all that I have?

Would you be held safe in the solace of
A kinder and deeper love? I'll hold you tonight
Would you be seen for all that you really are?
Come let your weary heart lay in the light

Would you be well from fearing you couldn't be
As dear as you are to me? You'll always belong
Would you be free to stand on your legs again
And run like the holy wind that's blowing you home?

Would you be free to stand on your legs again
And run like the holy wind that's blowing you home?

Sometimes you hear a line that snags you out of your inattention and lights your fire. I was listening to The Sacred podcast by Elizabeth Oldfield (who wrote Fully Alive, which is on my reading list) on the weekend and in particular an episode called ‘Becoming the People we Need at the End of the World’ in conversation with Sarah Wilson (author of This One Wild and Precious Life - Sarah is not a believer, but what she had to say was intriguing - and I suspect both those books have more substance than the rather cheesy titles might suggest), and in speaking about her Christian tradition Elizabeth says:

You were never promised that the world would go on forever. You were never promised stable democracy, comfortable prosperity ... What you were promised is that love is stronger than death. 

Something to remember … especially as government elections loom all about.

P.S. Chesterton’s picture has nothing to do with anything, he’s just cute. And I guess he’s an unexpected feature in my life.

One day the stars, down dripping,
Shall flow in golden wine:
We, of that nectar sipping,
As living stars will shine.
Free, from the tomb emerges
Love, to die never more;
Fulfilled, life heaves and surges
A sea without a shore.
All night! all blissful leisure!
One jubilating ode!
And the sun of all our pleasure
The countenance of God.

Novalis ‘Hymns to the Night’
Translated by George MacDonald

Just a portion of poetry I felt compelled to share one Friday evening.

So it’s been a while, which is probably more predictable here now than otherwise. There was one more portion of Aggressively Happy by Joy Marie Clarkson I was wanting to post before moving on, and it begins with a story from Maundy Thursday, so now seems an apt time to post it. This one gets at the crux of how to be happy in this world. Without doing too much online therapy, I’ve wasted enormous amounts of emotional energy on relational situations that would have been obviously hopeless to any astute observer, and I have had to ask myself why I did so and abandoned myself in the process, and it was all part of the jumbled mire on the road to truly imbibing the knowledge that I am loved by God and secure in him.

Last night in our Maundy Thursday service we sang one of my favourite old hymns, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, which I have been singing about the house today. I won’t post the lyrics and take this post in too many different directions, but might I encourage readers to google and soak them in. 

But now to the quote:

If we don’t have the question of identity settled by the acceptance of love, the stakes of everything are high. If we feel that our identity, value and lovability are in question, then in every experience, relationship, and accomplishment we search for the final evidence of our okay-ness. If our sense of self is not rooted and secured in the infinite love of God, we will spend our whole lives tossing relationships, jobs, accomplishments, piety and personal beauty into an infinite chasm that only the gentleness of God can fill. People aren’t people to us; they are validations of our lovability. Jobs aren’t jobs; they are proof that we really are useful and worth something. Adulation is a lifeline; every rejection confirms our worst suspicions. 

…

Ironically, refusing the love of God and others has a tendency to make us intensely self-centred. When you’re so wrapped up in thinking about yourself and how unloveable you are, there’s no room to think about other people. You don’t have the capacity to love people without trying to make them the solution to your deep chasm of loneliness. You’re not able to do a job for the pure joy of excellence, because you need it to validate you as a valuable, contributing member of society. The whole world becomes an extension of your need to be validated, seen, loved, approved of. And when the whole world is only as big as your own hurt, it is a very cramped and crabby universe indeed. 

…

I truly believe you cannot be happy in this world until you know you are loved, deep in your soul, all the way down to your dusty, smelly toes, which Jesus would happily wash. That secure love is what enables you to think about other people.

When that question is settled, so is everything else. It is only when we realise that God loves us that we can feel fundamentally and permanently okay, that we are able to fully give ourselves in relationships without losing ourselves, that we can invest ourselves in worthwhile work and enjoy experiences. You can lose and not be lost. You can enjoy things—friendship, romance, work—as gifts when you no longer have to seize them as evidence of your existential value. And it frees you up to be brave. You can try tremendously, because if you fall, it is only into gentle arms.

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

A book I read recently that I found more helpful and encouraging than I expected to find it was Aggressively Happy, by Joy Marie Clarkson. I am not at all a fan of toxic positivity, as often people attempting to maintain that facade have closet problems, but this book is not about toxic positivity. The subtitle is A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, and its essentially a guide to living a good life. 

One chapter and idea I particularly appreciated is called Flounder Well. We all have periods in life where we flounder, when the path we might have thought we were on is lost and we don’t then know where we’re going or what we’re doing. One great suggestion for how to view these periods in life came from improv theatre, where in order for it to work well, you have to accept and embrace the scene given to you, no matter how ludicrous, and then act and build on it from there. If you can’t work with the scenario presented to you, the theatre fails. It’s about saying “yes, and”. Only once you’ve said yes to what is, to the reality of your life, can you add the “and”. A quote:

“YES. We may not like the scene (or life) in which we find ourselves, but we have to accept it for what it is … We all find ourselves in stories that are not entirely of our own making. If we ruled the world, there are aspects of our stories we would not have included: personal flaws, setbacks, difficult family members, emotional wounds, financial problems, romantic disappointments. But there they are, rampaging through our lives … Accepting life, with all its warts and wounds included, does not mean surrender, or even approval of its brokenness; it simply means grappling with life as it is, with no illusions. 

AND. Once we have accepted our lives as they are, regrets and radiances alike, we can begin to shape our stories. Only when we see life with clear eyes and stubborn acceptance can we add our “and” to life. We can make something of this story, this life, with all its limitations and setbacks, weird characters, and unspectacular settings …”

The chapter includes a poem by Malcolm Guide, which also won me over (a singing bowl is a Chinese instrument, which slowly makes music by running a wooden dowel around the edge): 

Singing Bowl

Begin the song exactly where you are,
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air,

Accept it all and let it be for good.
Start with the very breath you breathe in now,
This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood

And listen to it, ringing soft and low.
Stay with the music, words will come in time.
Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.

Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.

~Malcolm Suite

The chapter then has some practical tips for floundering well. One is, ‘become the most interesting person in the room’  - by developing some of the skills and talents that every person has latent in them, and thinking about ways to grow areas of your humanity, such as: emotionally and socially; intellectually; spiritually, physically and practically. Another is a fun riff on a line from Sufjan Stevens, which is, ‘don’t be a total mess’. Something to aim for! :) This is about simply being an adult and taking responsibility for your life, but also finding pleasure in it. I’m working on a little bit more orderliness in some areas of my life for 2024! And also taking more time to truly rest and find pleasure at some point on weekends.

Another chapter I found helpful was called Enjoy things unironically - which perhaps describes me at the moment just being ridiculous about cats. To give you the rationale on this one:

“… the forces that make enjoying or admitting you enjoy things so fraught and complicated are the same ones that corrode your ability to form deep friendships, to believe in good things, and to admit with no hesitation that being alive is a good thing. It is my contention that the spiritual and emotional muscles we exercise in thoroughly and full-heartedly enjoying innocent pleasures are at the heart of living a good and meaningful life. To enjoy things unironically can be a small act of resistance to the soul-deadening forces of the modern world and can have profound spiritual repercussions. 

…

“In all our efforts to save the world, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it is a world worth saving … I am convinced that the joy and goodness of the world are more fundamental than its brokenness.”

And just for one more, I especially loved the chapter on Tell yourself a good story. I have to admit that, while I am a lover of stories, the story I tell myself about my life, and about who I have become as a person, is a very bad one mostly - and this can very much affect how we live and perceive what happens to us. 

“The stories we tell are not objective; they “make something” of our experiences, inclining us to notice some things and filter others out. The way we tell our stories gives our experiences a particular atmosphere, makes us think of ourselves as particular kinds of people. We tell ourselves stories to give our days, our years, and our lives a narrative arc. Narrative helps us string together the disparate experiences of our lives into a coherent whole. Stories are all about meaning, helping us to place particular moments in the context of our other experiences so we can understand them. Stories give us a sense of why things happened, and what might happen in the future …”

So, those are some of the reasons why this was a good book to read at the start of a new year.

Image 1 by Pexels from Pixabay
Image 2 by michael podger on Unsplash

One of the stand out books for me in 2023 was My Bright Abyss - Meditation of a Modern Believer. It’s hard to categorise what exactly it is, but it is a kind of memoir by poet Christian Wiman, about his coming to faith while facing a terminal (and seemingly extremely painful) cancer. I wouldn’t endorse every view in it (and the word “modern” in the title might give hints as to why, as I don’t believe the Christian faith needs any modernising), or all of his theological leanings, but what he shares is fascinating. That and there’s always encouragement in the stories of people who have found and believed Christianity to be true and beautiful and sense-making and life-giving, when the world would try to tell us it is none of those things. The author is evidently widely-read and intelligent (oh to spend your life reading and writing). It’s in my pile of books to go around again, because some books you feel you read too fast the first time through to absorb all the goodness. But from my first read, here are some of the more conventionally Christian quotes (there is much also he says about art and poetry that is worth quoting).

Nearer the end of the book the author says of his coming to belief in God:

Despite all that I have gone through, and despite all that I now face, I am still struck by the singular nature of the pain in the weeks after my diagnosis. It was not simply the fact itself searing through all the circumstances of my life, nor was it, as many people might suspect, the full impact of meaninglessness, the arbitrary nature of our existence, the utter illusion of God. No, it was an excess of meaning for which I had no context. It was the world burning to be itself beyond my ruined eyes. It was God straining through matter to make me see, and to grant me the grace of simple praise. (pg 156)

The paragraphs from closer to the beginning I found compelling (I think the first can apply to all forms of human love, not just romantic relationships which have a more formal ending than some):

Love does not die without our assent, though often (usually) that assent has been given unconsciously long before we come to give it consciously. Love is not only given by God, it is sustained by him. There is a constant interplay between divine and human love. Human love has an end, which is God, who makes it endless. (pg 29)

***

What you must realise, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all. The most blinding illumination that strikes and perhaps radically changes your life will be so attenuated and obscured by doubts and dailiness that you may one day come to suspect the truth of that moment at all. The calling that seemed so clear will be lost in echoes of questionings and indecision; the church that seemed to save you will fester in egos, complacencies, banalities; the deepest love of your life will work itself like a thorn in your heart until all you can think of is plucking it out. Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it. (pg 29)

There was something illuminating for me in this next paragraph. It’s so subtle it’s hard to explain why, as I have always (well, mostly) prayed “thy will be done” when asking God for things, and believe and would say that nothing comes to pass apart from God’s will. But still there are dreams that went unfulfilled and circumstances I wish could be otherwise, and something about leaning into Christ and saying as much about what is and isn't - right now (not just about future things I’m requesting) -instead of just enduring it or trying to make the most of it against my own wishes was helpful:

There is another way. It is the way of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading for release from his fate, abandoned by God. It is something you cannot learn as a kind of lesson simply from reading the text. Christ teaches by example, true, but he lives with us, lives in us, through imagination and experience. It is through all these trials in our own lives, these fears however small, that we come close to Christ, if we can learn to say, with him, “not my will, Lord, but yours”. This is in no way resignation, for Christ still had to act. We all have to act, whether it’s against the fears of our daily life or against the fear that life itself is in danger of being destroyed. And when we act in the will of God, we express hope it its purest and most powerful form, for hope, as Vaclav Havel has said, is a condition of your soul, not a response to the circumstances in which you find yourself. Hope is what Christ had in the garden, though he had no reason for it in terms of events, and hope is what he has right now, in the garden of our own griefs. (pg 166)

And for something a little less conventional, a quote about “glimmerings”, which if you have read here a while will know are a fixation of mine. Though I am still mulling on this one: 

“Glimmerings are what the soul’s composed of,” writes Seamus Heaney, an interesting—and, I think, accurate—thought, if the word “glimmerings” is read as both literal and metaphorical: the soul is not simply the agent that does the seeing (the entity to which metaphorical glimmerings are given), it is in some way the things that are seen (the world that glimmers); or, perhaps more accurately, the soul is the verb that makes an exchange between the self and reality—or the self and other selves—possible. It is the soul that turns perception into communication, and communication—even it’s just between one man and the storm of atoms around him—into communion. (pg 93)

Image by dre2uomaha0 from Pixabay

This is a post I half started before Christmas, which would have made more sense then, but I don’t think it’s limited to that particular day, so I decided to finish it. 

I found myself in TK-Maxx in Nowra a few weeks before Christmas, and to my surprise Dido’s Christmas Day came on over the shop sound system. It’s not a Christmas song you hear often in shops. I doubt the psychology of it would encourage spending, unless it evoked a melancholy calling for retail therapy. 

Nobody knows me in Nowra so I unashamedly sang quietly along in the dressing room and as I returned an item to the clothing racks, because it is a great song, and I was unexpectedly pleased to hear and recall it. It might be just another sappy Christmas love song if it wasn’t for the ambiguous ending. A young gentleman comes riding by, pauses a while by the fire, falls for his host's beauty, then leaves with the words “I shall return for you, my love, on Christmas Day”. The girl waits and prepares and saves all her Sunday clothes for that day. But then the song ends with the line “The last words I heard him say, were the last words I ever heard him say, I shall return for you my love on Christmas Day”. (Listen.)

There’s no explanation given for the ambiguous ending. Was he just a faithless sod who dashed the hopes of his waiting love, after recklessly making promises, or did he go off to war and not survive, or fall ill, or was he waylaid by unforeseen circumstances …? Whatever you imagine may have happened, it satisfying appeals to my melancholy and realistic streak. 

The song got stuck in my head after that visit to Nowra TK-Maxx in the lead up to Christmas so I fell to musing. And it’s the opposite of the true and actual meaning of Christmas really isn’t it. A promise is made, and either by rejection or faithlessness or tragedy or any one of a number of other consequences of the fall, the promise isn’t kept. A waiting girl is heart-broken and disappointed. 

Or perhaps rather it’s that the Christmas story is the opposite of that tale. 

I’ve had my share of encounters with faithless and dishonourable men, men who proved they’d sacrifice me in an instant to protect themselves from even an imaginary threat, who I seemingly empowered to treat me like so much rubbish through my excess of giving. And it can be hard to convince yourself that receiving such behaviour reflects nothing of the love of Christ, and to truly comprehend that Christ's is the love to heal all wounds, that it is faithful, true and reliable, greater than all earthly loves. But it is so. One of my favourite refrains in the bible in “the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever”. 

We might be still waiting for Christ to return for us ultimately, and carry us away to happily ever after, but the incarnation and resurrection are the proof and the first fruits of what’s to come. Christ says “I shall return for you, my love” (more or less - John 14:2-3) and he means it and won’t be thwarted by anything in this life. 

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

As some readers would know, I obtained my first pet in a long time as an adult at the beginning of the year. Since then have merrily spent considerable amounts of money on buying it accessories (just as well the cat was free, which is a considerable saving on a pedigree cat). So I have occasionally been pondering how we, with a Christian understanding of the world, should relate to pets and the resources we invest in them.

I have always believed in the care and conservation of creatures, as evidenced in my university degree, and that humans have a responsibility to ensure their survival. But pets seem to be ’next level’ in the care and investment they receive from us. It is curious, though, that when money is seen being spent on animals, be they wild or domestic, it is often frowned upon very quickly as money that would be better spent on starving children. What is especially odd is that people don’t immediately frown when money is spent on excessively large houses or fast cars, world trips, stylish furniture or new and unnecessary technologies.

Is that because we think houses and cars and furniture and travel and technology are beneficial and necessary to our (more valuable) human lives in a way that pets or the wild creatures aren’t? The statistics on the benefits of keeping pets (or spending time in nature - not to mention maintaining healthy ecosystems), might actually suggest otherwise … Or is it that, as they’re living creatures, investing resources in animals comes closer to and so reminds us more of all the starving children?

Yet, financial investment aside, in the expansive nature of love, loving a pet only increases, rather than diminishes, our capacity to love the world and others.*

Thus, I was very interested to come upon an unexpected comment on owning pets while reading Alistair McGrath’s biography of CS Lewis. It hits on a number of points I’ve pondered around the keeping of animals, such as where they sit in relation to humans, what we owe to them and what they can teach us. 

For Lewis, the true mark of the primacy of humans over animals is “acknowledging duties to them which they do not acknowledge to us.” Noblesse oblige, as the French say. Human dignity demands that humans show respect for animals. More than that, animals can enable human beings to develop compassion and care. Lewis’s theology of creation leads him to insist that human relationships with animals can be ennobling and fulfilling—both for animals and for humans.”

~ Alistair McGrath, CS Lewis: A Life

The Gottman Institute, famous for its research and advice on (human) relationships, recently featured an instagram post about what pets can teach us. Namely: Love is what makes a family; Ask for consent before you pet; A bid for attention doesn’t have to be verbal; Take a few minutes to play; Nonverbal communication is important; Everyone likes treats and new toys; Daily rituals, like morning cuddles, are worth the time; Slow down, spend quality time together; Being consistent creates trust. 

It has brought me joy to find ways to enrich the life of my furry companion, and satisfaction to see the way he notices and responds and purrs like a small engine when he’s pleased and comfortable. Taking him out on a harness to spend time outdoors indeed makes me slow down and poke around and sniff the world with him. I sense it is good for me to have a dependent, of sorts, in my life, who relies on me to show up and come home. And I will also now find satisfaction in knowing it can be ennobling and teach me compassion and school me in some of the basics of relationships, both human and animal, along the way. 

* I was pondering these ideas when Tish Harrison Warren wrote a subscriber opinion piece in New York Times, on pets, moral logic and love, called How a scrawny rescue dog taught me a lesson love, which quotes Karen Swallow Prior on Lessons from Loving and Losing a Pet from Christianity Today. Both articles expand on things I might otherwise have been trying to articulate.

Since this is my first post written in Substack I wanted to mark the occasion! So, welcome and please come on in. Take yourself on a self-guided tour. I’m still unpacking and rearranging and learning how things work best here, which is part of the fun. Can I offer you a metaphorical cup of tea, and a chat on the porch, if you’re not in a hurry?

A poem for a Sunday morning ... How I like this.

Any Morning

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won't even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

~ William Stafford

Here I am because I came upon a wonderful little portion of a poem, which is stirring echoes that make me quite sure I have read it before, but it has never struck me before just as it has now, about what poetry can do for the human race. It is from a poem called In Memory of W. B. Yeats, by W. H. Auden. Make sure you read to the end.

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

~W.H. Auden

Isn't that just fabulous! To me it speaks, very nicely, of the value of truth, beauty and goodness and what they, and good art, can communicate to the world. Earlier in the poem it says "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry". But making poetry of the hurt was a redemptive act. I love the line "make a vineyard of the curse".

Ebenezer has just climbed purring into my lap, which is a hazard of sitting on the couch these days, and reminded of life's small joys that persuade me to rejoice in the giver of them.

I thought I’d reenter the land of blogs to tell the world that I recently became responsible for the life of another living creature. 

Since I purchased my own home nearly eight years ago I have thought on and off about bringing a pet into my life. The delay seems to have been that I have always been more inclined towards a dog, but I couldn’t see how a dog would actually work in my life, so I gave it up. That’s because I run, and in the winter I don't have enough daylight available around work to both run and then come home and walk a dog, as their are limits to how early in the morning I am prepared to get myself out of bed and venture out into a dark frost, so I surmised that I'd need a dog that could run. And a dog that could can run wouldn’t enjoy townhouse life, might annoy my neighbours, and so it went on. 

Then as a former wildlife conservationist I have had a long-standing objection to cats, and the destruction they cause. So it wasn’t until COVID, and hearing that Canberra was to become a cat-containment city, that I began to ponder getting a cat. At that point in lockdowns you couldn’t get one for adoption, such was the demand, and the list of criteria required for what was available was long, such that it seemed my life arrangements wouldn’t qualify me to care for a cat rescued off the street, which was a ridiculous notion. But I began to research what breed of cats do better left alone, since returning to work in the office was sure to happen one day. That’s when I discovered the British Shorthair cat, and was rather taken with their chubby cheeks and round faces and wide-apart ears. Then I found out there was a breeder nearby, so I sent an email out of curiosity, one thing led to another, and before long I had added my name to the list. 

I’m actually still on that list, waiting for a kitten. But more recently I became aware of a male blue British shorthair, which was my reference, that a friend of extended family wanted to re-home. So I expressed my interest, time went by, then on Christmas Eve I was asked again if I still wanted to take him, to which I said an enthusiastic yes on Christmas Day, so I have now adopted a six-year-old male cat. 

His name had formerly been Piggie, but partly as I decided to take him on Christmas Day, and he’s a rather distinguished British Cat, I have renamed him Ebenezer Piggie. It’s also partly as I like the biblical reminder “hither by thy help I’ve come”, and as it happens it was also the name of a great-grandfather of mine. 

I’m not overly familiar with cats, and won’t claim expert status two weeks in, like some fool of the internet, but I believe I have come upon one of the most easy-going cats ever. From the beginning he has climbed on top of me and purred like a small motorcycle engine, let me put a harness on him to take him outside even though he spent his previous life unharnessed in a 14th floor apartment, eaten whatever I have given him, hasn’t destroyed any furniture. But he does let me know, loudly, when he is not happy, which is at times amusing.

Receiving this cat of my choice, out of the nowhere, as though I am doing someone else a favour, has been a little gift of grace to me. It is a blessing to have something in my home to love and care for, who - mostly - is happy to receive it, and gives a little love and affection in return. And I feel strangely noticed, as though what I now do with my days at home, and whether or not and when I return home, is observed and important to a small furry someone. At times I have wondered what I have done to my world as I now bear this responsibility and a duty of care to this creature, but that is perhaps good for me. 

I’m still learning and realising what are the therapeutic benefits of taking on this furry friend. A couple of weeks after I had signed up for this cat, which I did on the day my grandfather entered into glory and I couldn’t be there because of the plague, I read this article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-19/trauma-healing-cat-pet-something-to-live-for/100446182 I wasn't anywhere close to suicidal, but I suppose I have my collection of traumas, and I was intrigued to read that the unconditional love of pets gives us a feeling of belonging. Already I walk around my house chatting to this cat.

I feel like attending to this creature, and indeed creating an instagram for him, is a lesson in slowing down and noticing small moments of wonder and delight. When I put his harness on and have to wander slowly about my courtyard while he sniffs and stares and pokes at leaves and spiderwebs, I get impatient to come back inside and do important things, but it is no doubt good for me to do a little something to please another living creature. I suppose all this happens to parents of small children, but for those of us without those small harbingers and bringers of wonders, we make do with the creatures. 

I’m sure there’ll be more of the cat featured here, and I have already noted on social media that I might just unashamedly embrace being a crazy cat lady.