A visualisation prayer / meditation

Anthony De Mello is for me, an insight of just how intimate with God a human being can become. He writings embody a type of spiritual maturity of which I can only gaze at from afar.

I read the below excerpt with awe. It has stoked up a passion for talking to God that I had long since become numb to in the chaos of modern hectic urban living.

I heartily recommend this classic De Mello text to anyone wishing to come closer to Jesus Christ. His advice is clear, simple and can be performed by anyone at anytime. Doesn't that echo the nature of the Lord's own teachings?

Anyway, without further ado I give you Anthony De Mello:

An Excerpt from Contact with God: Retreat Conferences by Anthony de Mello

As a kind of footnote to what I have said about meditating on the life of Christ through fantasy I should like to speak of the use of this method as a means of meditation on our own life with the purpose of experiencing healing and growth. Let me explain.

When I meditate on any scene in Christ's life, I make myself present to it. I imagine I am there, taking part in all the events, speaking, listening, acting. When I return to some scene in my past life, I relive it just as it happened with one difference: this time I get Christ to take an active part in it. Let me give you an example.

Suppose I return to a scene that causes me much distress. An event that brought me humiliation, like a public rebuke, or one that brought me great pain, like the death of a friend. I relive the whole event, in all its painful detail. I feel once more the pain, the loss, the humiliation, the bitterness. This time, however, Jesus is there. What role is he playing? Is he a comforter and strengthener? Is he the one who is causing me this pain and loss? I interact with him, just as I did with the other persons in that event. I seek strength from him, an explanation of what I don't understand; I seek a meaning to the whole event.

What is the purpose of this exercise? It is what some people call the healing of memories. There are memories that keep rankling within us — situations in our past life that have remained unresolved and continue to stir within us. This constitutes a perpetual wound that in some ways hampers us from plunging more fully into life, that sometimes seriously handicaps us in our ability to cope with life

. . . .

It is important for our personal growth, both spiritual and emotional, that we resolve these unresolved situations that keep rankling within us. When we relive them in the company of Christ, again and again, if need be, we will notice that a new meaning comes into them, that the sting goes out of them, that we can now return to them without any emotional upset; in fact, that we can even return to them now with a sense of gratitude to God, who planned these events for some purpose that will rebound to our benefit and to his glory. This form of prayer is good therapy and good spirituality.

God Sees The Truth, But Waits

I'm a big fan of "narrative theology", what I would crudely define as the art of teaching the most abstract and complicated ideas through simple, easy-to-understand stories. One of the masters of this technique was Leo Tolstoy.

I've read many of his short stories, and am always amazed at their sublime quality, the way he approaches deep powerful issues and portrays them so the reader walks away edified, more human, closer to God. The following story is one such example. "God Sees The Truth, But Waits" is a classic - there's no doubting this - and I encourage you to put aside 15 or so minutes to fully appreciate it... Enjoy! God bless. Stuart

In the town of Vladimir lived a young merchant named Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov. He had two shops and a house of his own.

Aksionov was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed fellow, full of fun, and very fond of singing. When quite a young man he had been given to drink, and was riotous when he had had too much; but after he married he gave up drinking, except now and then.

One summer Aksionov was going to the Nizhny Fair, and as he bade good-bye to his family, his wife said to him, "Ivan Dmitrich, do not start to-day; I have had a bad dream about you."
Aksionov laughed, and said, "You are afraid that when I get to the fair I shall go on a spree."

His wife replied: "I do not know what I am afraid of; all I know is that I had a bad dream. I dreamt you returned from the town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your hair was quite grey."
Aksionov laughed. "That's a lucky sign," said he. "See if I don't sell out all my goods, and bring you some presents from the fair."

So he said good-bye to his family, and drove away.

When he had travelled half-way, he met a merchant whom he knew, and they put up at the same inn for the night. They had some tea together, and then went to bed in adjoining rooms.

It was not Aksionov's habit to sleep late, and, wishing to travel while it was still cool, he aroused his driver before dawn, and told him to put in the horses.

Then he made his way across to the landlord of the inn (who lived in a cottage at the back), paid his bill, and continued his journey.

When he had gone about twenty-five miles, he stopped for the horses to be fed. Aksionov rested awhile in the passage of the inn, then he stepped out into the porch, and, ordering a samovar to be heated, got out his guitar and began to play.

Suddenly a troika drove up with tinkling bells and an official alighted, followed by two soldiers. He came to Aksionov and began to question him, asking him who he was and whence he came.

Aksionov answered him fully, and said, "Won't you have some tea with me?" But the official went on cross-questioning him and asking him. "Where did you spend last night? Were you alone, or with a fellow-merchant? Did you see the other merchant this morning? Why did you leave the inn before dawn?"

Aksionov wondered why he was asked all these questions, but he described all that had happened, and then added, "Why do you cross-question me as if I were a thief or a robber? I am travelling on business of my own, and there is no need to question me."

Then the official, calling the soldiers, said, "I am the police-officer of this district, and I question you because the merchant with whom you spent last night has been found with his throat cut. We must search your things."

They entered the house. The soldiers and the police-officer unstrapped Aksionov's luggage and searched it. Suddenly the officer drew a knife out of a bag, crying, "Whose knife is this?"
Aksionov looked, and seeing a blood-stained knife taken from his bag, he was frightened.
"How is it there is blood on this knife?"

Aksionov tried to answer, but could hardly utter a word, and only stammered: "I--don't know--not mine." Then the police-officer said: "This morning the merchant was found in bed with his throat cut.
You are the only person who could have done it. The house was locked from inside, and no one else was there. Here is this blood-stained knife in your bag and your face and manner betray you! Tell me how you killed him, and how much money you stole?"

Aksionov swore he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant after they had had tea together; that he had no money except eight thousand rubles of his own, and that the knife was not his. But his voice was broken, his face pale, and he trembled with fear as though he went guilty.
The police-officer ordered the soldiers to bind Aksionov and to put him in the cart. As they tied his feet together and flung him into the cart, Aksionov crossed himself and wept. His money and goods were taken from him, and he was sent to the nearest town and imprisoned there. Enquiries as to his character were made in Vladimir. The merchants and other inhabitants of that town said that in former days he used to drink and waste his time, but that he was a good man. Then the trial came on: he was charged with murdering a merchant from Ryazan, and robbing him of twenty thousand rubles.

His wife was in despair, and did not know what to believe. Her children were all quite small; one was a baby at her breast. Taking them all with her, she went to the town where her husband was in jail. At first she was not allowed to see him; but after much begging, she obtained permission from the officials, and was taken to him. When she saw her husband in prison-dress and in chains, shut up with thieves and criminals, she fell down, and did not come to her senses for a long time. Then she drew her children to her, and sat down near him. She told him of things at home, and asked about what had happened to him. He told her all, and she asked, "What can we do now?"
"We must petition the Czar not to let an innocent man perish."

His wife told him that she had sent a petition to the Czar, but it had not been accepted.
Aksionov did not reply, but only looked downcast.

Then his wife said, "It was not for nothing I dreamt your hair had turned grey. You remember? You should not have started that day." And passing her fingers through his hair, she said: "Vanya dearest, tell your wife the truth; was it not you who did it?"

"So you, too, suspect me!" said Aksionov, and, hiding his face in his hands, he began to weep. Then a soldier came to say that the wife and children must go away; and Aksionov said good-bye to his family for the last time.

When they were gone, Aksionov recalled what had been said, and when he remembered that his wife also had suspected him, he said to himself, "It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy."

And Aksionov wrote no more petitions; gave up all hope, and only prayed to God.

Aksionov was condemned to be flogged and sent to the mines. So he was flogged with a knot, and when the wounds made by the knot were healed, he was driven to Siberia with other convicts.

For twenty-six years Aksionov lived as a convict in Siberia. His hair turned white as snow, and his beard grew long, thin, and grey. All his mirth went; he stooped; he walked slowly, spoke little, and never laughed, but he often prayed.

In prison Aksionov learnt to make boots, and earned a little money, with which he bought The Lives of the Saints. He read this book when there was light enough in the prison; and on Sundays in the prison-church he read the lessons and sang in the choir; for his voice was still good.

The prison authorities liked Aksionov for his meekness, and his fellow-prisoners respected him: they called him "Grandfather," and "The Saint." When they wanted to petition the prison authorities about anything, they always made Aksionov their spokesman, and when there were quarrels among the prisoners they came to him to put things right, and to judge the matter.

No news reached Aksionov from his home, and he did not even know if his wife and children were still alive.

One day a fresh gang of convicts came to the prison. In the evening the old prisoners collected round the new ones and asked them what towns or villages they came from, and what they were sentenced for. Among the rest Aksionov sat down near the newcomers, and listened with downcast air to what was said.

One of the new convicts, a tall, strong man of sixty, with a closely-cropped grey beard, was telling the others what be had been arrested for.

"Well, friends," he said, "I only took a horse that was tied to a sledge, and I was arrested and accused of stealing. I said I had only taken it to get home quicker, and had then let it go; besides, the driver was a personal friend of mine. So I said, 'It's all right.' 'No,' said they, 'you stole it.' But how or where I stole it they could not say. I once really did something wrong, and ought by rights to have come here long ago, but that time I was not found out. Now I have been sent here for nothing at all... Eh, but it's lies I'm telling you; I've been to Siberia before, but I did not stay long."

"Where are you from?" asked some one.

"From Vladimir. My family are of that town. My name is Makar, and they also call me Semyonich."
Aksionov raised his head and said: "Tell me, Semyonich, do you know anything of the merchants Aksionov of Vladimir? Are they still alive?"
"Know them? Of course I do. The Aksionovs are rich, though their father is in Siberia: a sinner like ourselves, it seems! As for you, Gran'dad, how did you come here?"

Aksionov did not like to speak of his misfortune. He only sighed, and said, "For my sins I have been in prison these twenty-six years."

"What sins?" asked Makar Semyonich.

But Aksionov only said, "Well, well--I must have deserved it!" He would have said no more, but his companions told the newcomers how Aksionov came to be in Siberia; how some one had killed a merchant, and had put the knife among Aksionov's things, and Aksionov had been unjustly condemned.

When Makar Semyonich heard this, he looked at Aksionov, slapped his own knee, and exclaimed, "Well, this is wonderful! Really wonderful! But how old you've grown, Gran'dad!"

The others asked him why he was so surprised, and where he had seen Aksionov before; but Makar Semyonich did not reply. He only said: "It's wonderful that we should meet here, lads!"
These words made Aksionov wonder whether this man knew who had killed the merchant; so he said, "Perhaps, Semyonich, you have heard of that affair, or maybe you've seen me before?"
"How could I help hearing? The world's full of rumours. But it's a long time ago, and I've forgotten what I heard."

"Perhaps you heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksionov.

Makar Semyonich laughed, and replied: "It must have been him in whose bag the knife was found! If some one else hid the knife there, 'He's not a thief till he's caught,' as the saying is. How could any one put a knife into your bag while it was under your head? It would surely have woke you up."

When Aksionov heard these words, he felt sure this was the man who had killed the merchant. He rose and went away. All that night Aksionov lay awake. He felt terribly unhappy, and all sorts of images rose in his mind. There was the image of his wife as she was when he parted from her to go to the fair. He saw her as if she were present; her face and her eyes rose before him; he heard her speak and laugh. Then he saw his children, quite little, as they: were at that time: one with a little cloak on, another at his mother's breast. And then he remembered himself as he used to be-young and merry. He remembered how he sat playing the guitar in the porch of the inn where he was arrested, and how free from care he had been. He saw, in his mind, the place where he was flogged, the executioner, and the people standing around; the chains, the convicts, all the twenty-six years of his prison life, and his premature old age. The thought of it all made him so wretched that he was ready to kill himself.

"And it's all that villain's doing!" thought Aksionov. And his anger was so great against Makar Semyonich that he longed for vengeance, even if he himself should perish for it. He kept repeating prayers all night, but could get no peace. During the day he did not go near Makar Semyonich, nor even look at him.

A fortnight passed in this way. Aksionov could not sleep at night, and was so miserable that he did not know what to do.

One night as he was walking about the prison he noticed some earth that came rolling out from under one of the shelves on which the prisoners slept. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly Makar Semyonich crept out from under the shelf, and looked up at Aksionov with frightened face.

Aksionov tried to pass without looking at him, but Makar seized his hand and told him that he had dug a hole under the wall, getting rid of the earth by putting it into his high-boots, and emptying it out every day on the road when the prisoners were driven to their work.

"Just you keep quiet, old man, and you shall get out too. If you blab, they'll flog the life out of me, but I will kill you first."

Aksionov trembled with anger as he looked at his enemy. He drew his hand away, saying, "I have no wish to escape, and you have no need to kill me; you killed me long ago! As to telling of you--I may do so or not, as God shall direct."

Next day, when the convicts were led out to work, the convoy soldiers noticed that one or other of the prisoners emptied some earth out of his boots. The prison was searched and the tunnel found. The Governor came and questioned all the prisoners to find out who had dug the hole. They all denied any knowledge of it. Those who knew would not betray Makar Semyonich, knowing he would be flogged almost to death. At last the Governor turned to Aksionov whom he knew to be a just man, and said:

"You are a truthful old man; tell me, before God, who dug the hole?"

Makar Semyonich stood as if he were quite unconcerned, looking at the Governor and not so much as glancing at Aksionov. Aksionov's lips and hands trembled, and for a long time he could not utter a word. He thought, "Why should I screen him who ruined my life? Let him pay for what I have suffered. But if I tell, they will probably flog the life out of him, and maybe I suspect him wrongly. And, after all, what good would it be to me?"

"Well, old man," repeated the Governor, "tell me the truth: who has been digging under the wall?"
Aksionov glanced at Makar Semyonich, and said, "I cannot say, your honour. It is not God's will that I should tell! Do what you like with me; I am your hands."

However much the Governor! tried, Aksionov would say no more, and so the matter had to be left.
That night, when Aksionov was lying on his bed and just beginning to doze, some one came quietly and sat down on his bed. He peered through the darkness and recognised Makar.

"What more do you want of me?" asked Aksionov. "Why have you come here?"

Makar Semyonich was silent. So Aksionov sat up and said, "What do you want? Go away, or I will call the guard!"

Makar Semyonich bent close over Aksionov, and whispered, "Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!"
"What for?" asked Aksionov.

"It was I who killed the merchant and hid the knife among your things. I meant to kill you too, but I heard a noise outside, so I hid the knife in your bag and escaped out of the window."

Aksionov was silent, and did not know what to say. Makar Semyonich slid off the bed-shelf and knelt upon the ground. "Ivan Dmitrich," said he, "forgive me! For the love of God, forgive me! I will confess that it was I who killed the merchant, and you will be released and can go to your home."

"It is easy for you to talk," said Aksionov, "but I have suffered for you these twenty-six years. Where could I go to now?... My wife is dead, and my children have forgotten me. I have nowhere to go..."
Makar Semyonich did not rise, but beat his head on the floor. "Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!" he cried.

"When they flogged me with the knot it was not so hard to bear as it is to see you now ... yet you had pity on me, and did not tell. For Christ's sake forgive me, wretch that I am!" And he began to sob.

When Aksionov heard him sobbing he, too, began to weep. "God will forgive you!" said he. "Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you." And at these words his heart grew light, and the longing for home left him. He no longer had any desire to leave the prison, but only hoped for his last hour to come.

In spite of what Aksionov had said, Makar Semyonich confessed, his guilt. But when the order for his release came, Aksionov was already dead.

A parable from the prophet Banksy

Once upon a time there was a Bear and a Bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the Bee collected nectar from morning to night while the Bear lay on his back basking in the long grass.

When winter came the Bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself, “I hope that Bee will share some of his honey with me”.

But the Bee was nowhere to be found – he had died from a stress-induced coronary disease.


Moral of the story - Take it easy.

(Taken from - http://www.eleventhcommandment.com.au)

TRUST

“Upheaval, turmoil, confusion”. Worse – “distrust, anger, disappointment”.

These are just some of the strong, passionate words that I’ve recently encountered that express views and opinions with regard to the latest shenanigans of the unfortunate current (British) government.

There is a sense of helplessness abound. The carpet has been pulled from under the population’s feet.

The recent political scandals (of which I will refrain from going into detail about here) of Westminster gently whisper that old fundament of human life: In the Lord, put your trust (Psalm 11:1).

There is no mortal messiah in whom we can put our full trust and belief. There is no man-made organisation, either, that warrants our absolute confidence.

Gordon Brown, David Cameron or even Barack Obama – these are men, mere mortals – flawed, sinful and destined to error. They will let us down - fact.

God is unsimilar. Even when He seems to disappoint he is, in reality, raising us up. It is like when a child is told that he can’t have any sweets – he is bitterly disappointed. But his parents know that he should be eating more fruit, consuming a healthier diet. What appears to us to be a bad deal is always the best we could possibly receive.

“Where is the logic in that”? I hear you crying from the rooftops. If we are to experience life as active citizens of this world, then we need to acknowledge that God transcends all limits. He is life, but he is also death. What God gives us is always perfection because he is with us, always.

We can’t lose! If I’m happy, God is with me. If I’m sad, God is with me. If I’m sick, healthy, depressed, horrified… No matter what the situation, God is with me. Even in death, God is there holding my hand, reassuring me, loving me, caring for me. He is authentic.

Self-fulfilment comes without a price for us; Christ paid it on the cross, many years ago.

All we have to do is honour Him and offer Him, and only Him our true, undying love and dedication.

Stuart

Life’s Road

Some people travel in straight lines;

sat in metal boxes, eyes ahead,

always mindful of their target,

moving in obedience to coloured lights and white lines

mission accomplished at journey's end.

Some people travel round in circles:

trudging in drudgery,

eyes looking down, knowing only too well their daily, unchanging round

moving in response to clock and to habit

journey never finished, yet never begun.

I want to travel in patterns of God's making:

walking in wonder,

gazing all around, knowing my destiny though not my destination

moving to the rhythm of the surging of his spirit.

A journey which when life ends, in Christ has just begun.

Stuart

Atheist buses denying God's existence take to streets

Organisers originally hoped to put the message on just a handful of London buses, as an antidote to posters put up by religious groups which they claimed were "threatening eternal damnation" to non-believers.

But after the campaign received high-profile support from the prominent atheist Prof Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association, the modest £5,500 target was met within minutes and more than £140,000 has now been donated since the launch in October.

Enough money has now been raised to place the message – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – on 200 bendy buses in the capital for a month, with the first ones taking to the streets .

A further 600 buses carrying the adverts will be seen by passengers and passers-by in cities across England, Wales and Scotland, from Aberdeen and Dundee to York, Coventry, Swansea and Bristol.

In addition, two large LCD screens bearing the atheist message have been placed in Oxford Street, central London, while 1,000 posters containing quotes from well-known non-believers will be placed on Underground trains for two weeks starting on Monday.

They feature lines doubting the existence of God, and celebrating the natural world, written by Albert Einstein, Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Adams and Emily Dickinson.

It is the first ever atheist advertising campaign to take place in Britain, and similar adverts are now also running on public transport in America and Spain.

Ariane Sherine, a writer who first thought of the atheist bus adverts, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."

The campaign has even been welcomed by religious groups for increasing the profile of debate about faith, and although there was tight security outside the launch event by the Royal Albert Hall, the campaigners have not received any threats from fundamentalists.

Paul Woolley, director of Theos, a theology think tank which donated £50 to the cause, said: "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives."

Some atheist supporters of the campaign were disappointed that the wording of the adverts did not declare categorically that God does not exist, although there were fears that this could break advertising guidelines.

Prof Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, said: "I wanted something stronger but with hindsight I think it's probably a good thing because it makes people think. It's just food for thought – people will have conversations in pubs when they see these buses."

Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said the adverts were "overwhelmingly positive" and were intended to reassure agnostics and atheists that there is nothing wrong with not believing in God.

Taken from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4141765/Atheist-buses-denying-Gods-existence-take-to-streets.html

Probably no God, eh? Not a very certain statement... Still, hopefully this'll get a lot of people thinking about God that normally wouldn't.

Stuart

Little Christ

I think of myself as an optimist. This is not an achieved state, a point of view arrived at by thought of principle, it is an attitude inculcated by experience.

If you were to drop your wallet in the street I contend it would be likely to fall at the feet of a "little Christ", a decent, kind, tolerant and likeable soul, someone, roughly speaking, on the side of God.

People today like to claim that we have become a ruder, more selfish nation: they believe that if you were to collapse in the street the populace would simply ignore you, possibly even crossing the street in disgust. The ritual repetition of this belief is as common and universal as going on about how winter always catches us by surprise or swapping eulogies on the magnificence of reality TV.

But if everyone expresses revulsion at the growing callousness of the British, who then are those Britons who actually evince this callousness? Or are we to believe that the same people who ventilate their contempt for others' indifference are the very ones who, at the drop of a pedestrian, will themselves pass by on the other side?

It is true that there is not a driver alive, including you and me, who has not said, “Crikey, that car's speeding, what a £$%^&!” And you can guarantee that those involved in the big pile up on the M4 the other day have said more that once in their lives, “Crikey, that car's speeding, what a £$%^&!”

So perhaps we are all hypocrites. We damn others for what we fear as faults in ourselves. It is certainly observable that those who most notice another's excessive drinking, for instance, as those most worried about their own habit.

But by projecting our own fears, inadequacies and self-loathing onto others we perpetuate those failings. Any doctor will point out to you the first step to the cure of an addiction is to confess out loud, to others, that you have it.

So let it be with other problems. Paradoxically, the moment you tell others what a lousy driver you are, you cease to be a lousy driver at all. “I must be careful here”, you say to yourself, like any good driver, “it's quite foggy and I'm a hopeless driver.” Any workaholic will tell you he drives himself hard because he is so lazy!

G.K. Chesterton, the modern master of the paradox, realised this when he ended a long newspaper correspondence on the subject “What Is Wrong With This Country” by writing “Sir, I know exactly what is wrong with this country. It is me”.

If everyone had written to say it was their fault that the country was in a mess, rather than blaming it on the young, the rich, the unemployed, the poor, the teachers, the experts, the media, the politicians, and anyone but themselves, there would have been nothing wrong with the country in the first place.

A nation of Chestertons, a country whose citizens blame themselves and not others, would be a Utopia or, possibly, the Kingdom of God...

Stuart

Tolerance

It is held by many Christians, both here in the UK and abroad that AIDS is a visitation from God, sent down to punish whose life-styles He finds reprehensible.

This is one of the most startling and disturbing ideas to have emerged from a species already renowned for its fatheadedness and unwillingness to reason that I have ever heard.

We are supposed to imagine a Divine Being who for centuries has gazed down on earth and witnessed daily acts of cruelty, wickedness, violence, tyranny and merciless hatred without ever raising a hand to interfere; a Divine Being who, since the Ark, has vowed never to involve himself in Mankind's affairs, but who, late in the twentieth century, decides that those who roll around with same-gendered friends or who, like thousands of respectable Victorians before them, decide to fill their brains with a distillation of poppy juice, are meet to be destroyed by the most unpleasant, lethal and ruthless plague that ever the earth has seen. What kind of Divine Being could be so capricious, cruel and irrational as to behave like that? Where is the disease that affect only concentration camp guards? Where the virus that strikes down the torturers of children, the corrupt, the murderous and the despotic?

Well, it may be argued that only a fundamentalist fringe can dare hold such desperate beliefs. But there is an apparently less extreme view that argues that those who contracted the disease through blood transfusions, primarily the haemophiliacs, are somehow “innocent” sufferers. This implies of course that the rest are guilty, and therefore somehow less deserving of our pity.

Pity, however, is not subject to computation, qualification or contingency. It, like mercy, droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. Certainly one could argue that anyone who becomes HIV positive today must have done so by disregarding simple advice freely available for years and is therefore foolish. But when we begin to divide the world into the deserving and the undeserving, as the Victorians did with the poor, we are turning our backs on every decent human impulse.

How would Christ have behaved in this situation? Would he distinguish and discriminate, would he pronounce judgement? It seems unlikely that a man who touched lepers and befriended sinners would ally himself with those who crow and rub their hands with barely disguised pleasure at the misery and suffering this has brought. He might well say “Go and sin no more,” but he would say that as much to the bank-manager, the pastor and the politician as to the homosexual or drug user. We are, after all, all of us sinners.

Christ is still the man who said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Twenty years into the development of the disease, if the advice of the Princess of Wales that when we meet someone with AIDS we hug them is taken up, then perhaps some actual good may have come of this affliction, something that improves us as well as those who are suffering.

For it is sure that even if AIDS lasts a thousand years it will never claim as many lives as intolerance already has and daily continues to do so.

Stuart

Do you want to be my friend?

We all like to be helped. Quite often friends are chosen because of their social standing and potential as “helpers”. We seek out those richer and more influential than ourselves and try to befriend them. Such glee is obtained in receiving an invite to a “bigger” person’s home: we advertise it at every opportunity.

It’s all part of our personal “security”, you see. We strive to collect as many get-out-of-jail-free cards as we can, so that when faced with adversity, we have a protective shield to hide behind.

Society is still very much vertical in nature, and our necks are hurting because of the strain of looking upwards. There is talk that class division is something of the past, and that may hold some truth, but for the vast majority are no better than common rats, climbing, and treading on top on one another to save their own skins. This is the ethos that our world abides by.

The mindset and world-view of Christ, however, literally shakes this up and turns it upside down with a crash.

If we were to follow Christ’s example then the big and grand would have to look up to the small and poor.

The implications for this are enormous in all aspects. The capitalist system that contains us would take on a new dimension: the rich and powerful would run at every chance to rescue those in need. Our governments really would serve the common person, telling them the truth instead of smearing them with a tar of deceit.

Giant corporations would probably dissolve, relinquishing their power to the open hands of the small. Corporate propaganda would take on transparency as a value, and the same products would be accessible to the same people.

Christ served. He washed feet. He fed the hungry. He mingled with the sick and excluded. He died so that others may live.

His voice, the Holy Spirit, invites humanity to follow. We are presented with a choice: either accept Christ as an ideology to be valued and continue down this terminal road. Or go a step further and restructure our lives, and the world we abide in, so that they imitate and reflect. They say that authentic Christianity has never been tried... I say it's never too late.

Stuart

Love your neighbour as yourself

An impossible instruction? As far as I'm aware, apart from Jesus himself who sacrificed himself on the cross so that others may live, no one else has ever managed to pull it off.

I think most people only just manage to love themselves, let alone tuck a bit away for others!

In fact, I only love myself because I find it all so easy to "overlook" the wrongs that I do.

I, somehow, disconnect myself from my actions. I dismissively tell myself that the errors I make are normal and not important. "Everyone makes mistakes", I tell myself. I brush away my own sin as if it never even existed...

My neighbour, however, is tarred for life with the sin that he commits against me. If someone wrongs me, I subconsciously tell myself that this person cannot be trusted any more, that he has blown his chance with me.

Jesus tells us that there is nothing more important than loving God and loving our neighbours. So, would Jesus set us an impossible task? I know that so far, if my salvation were to be based on good works (which I don't believe it is) I would already have my one way ticket to damnation in my hand.

The secret to successfully obeying this most important of commandments is linked with the loving of God.

To love God with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength is to put Him at the very forefront of our lives: before our money, homes, cars, fine clothes, fancy food - everything.

If this happens (and I'm not for one moment saying that I live this way - although I have tasted it) our love and concern for our fellows grows tenfold, a hundredfold.

I would say that to obey Jesus, and love our neighbours as we love ourselves in today's world, is closely linked with the surrender of our accumulation of possessions and commodities - the symbols our of world-view.

Only then can we begin to glimpse, and appreciate, the humanity in others (and ourselves) for what it is truly worth.

BOFF