The art of letter writing

Some of us will have written and received Christmass cards this year. Often people will write a little letter to include with the card letting the recipient know what has been going on over the last 12 months. While I joyfully receive any card, it is the ones with an epistle inside that gives me a special joy.

Letters make us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters and the circumstances of their origin. They help deepen our understanding of these inspiring artefacts of the human condition. They are windows into the love, beauty, pain, and humour of their creators and recipients.

And these are not the only types of letters we write. Letters of complaint, job applications, thank you letters, letters requesting changes or making suggestions — the list goes on and on.

But the thing that really moves me when I receive a written letter or card is that at some level I am aware that the sender actually sat down and physically wrote this letter. Their hands touched the card I am now holding. The words on the page are in their own handwriting. They moved the pen over this card, they sealed the envelope and posted it by hand. And no matter the content, no matter how glib or trite or illegible the writing, there is a very real sense in which the sender has offered me a small part of themselves. A glimpse into their life and a physical, tangible, re-readable artefact of themselves.

Emails may connect us in a shiny, slick way but there is something more heartfelt and beautiful in a written card or letter than words on a screen. Maybe in a world that has failed to connect, we might rediscover the art of letter writing which can connect us all.

Epiphany 31 December 2023

In praise of an empty cup.

It took quite a time for the three kings to get to the Holy Family, so the image that you may have seen on your christmass cards with them visiting a squawking infant in the manger, is not entirely accurate, although it is rather cute. We are blessed to have a window in our Lady Chapel of this encounter.

Heaps is going on in the window and it’s well worth a look and a contemplate. We are fortunate to be able to leave Christchurch open for reflection and private prayer from 8 am to 4 pm and anyone and everyone is welcome to pop in. Plenty we know about and there are plenty that we will never know about.

In the window, the Magi who has the gold looks straight out at us. The gold is in the shape of an orb which is a spherical symbol given to a new monarch. It usually has a cross on the top.

The second king has the frankincense. It is in a nifty looking container. He is looking to the right of the window presumably to Mary, Jesus and Joseph although they are not visible. Our imaginations are left to run amuck as to where these kings actually are and who they are with. Both the king with the gold and the king with the sweet incense are standing.

That just leaves the guy with the myrrh which was  a substance that was used to anoint corpses. Now just as the gold tells us that Jesus is a king and the frankincense tells us that Jesus is God, so too the myrrh foreshadows an early and grizzly death. The magi with the myrrh is also looking to the right of the window, again we presume he is gazing at the Holy Family.

There are many things that make each of these gentlemen unique. Where each is looking, whether they have a beard, the way that they are dressed. There are a few things that sets the guy with the myrrh apart from his buddies and I hope that a picture of him may appear in the pew sheet today.

For one thing, he is the only one that is kneeling. He has adopted the posture of humility and respect. Perhaps he’s aware of who it is before him. He might be aware of his own inadequacy, maybe even some of his own naughtiness.

Our friend is holding a cup and it looks a lot like a chalice. My money is on the theory that the artist understood that at the eucharist the blessed wine in the chalice becomes Our Lords blood in some special lovely way that we can never understand but do need; hence the symbolism of the chalice /myrrh foreshadowing a rather mucky death.

At one level, each of these gentlemen are a bit like us.

There are days when we worship the King all glorious above and we realise who it is that exercises the most potent authority of authentic and undying love over us.

There are days when we worship God and it is marvellous and exuberant. We glimpse or rather sense ‘That other dimension’. The heavenly perspective. These moments are usually unplanned and very fleeting, but sometimes just sometimes, the God of surprises allows us a fleeting peek.

But there are times too when we are like the man who brings the myrrh. We come on our knees, physical or metaphorical. Our hearts are gashed, our lives have unravelled and the thing that that is  front and centre of our hearts is very confronting and difficult.

And I want to say in the most reassuring, pastoral, Fr. David way that I can, if this is you today, then it is OK. Those that argue that you have to be exuberant and joyful 110% of the time and to be down cast is a sin, have it quite wrong. Our Lord wept and bled just as much as he laughed and danced and ate and drank.

All He asks is that we be authentic in what we offer. It’s not that hard.

Like the gent in the window, sometimes we hold up the chalice of our heart and all we have is some swishy dregs that to us seem mightily unworthy and inappropriate. And if for you  today there is just some skanky residue… then offer it with much gusto and know that God accepts it, treasures it, sanctifies and makes it holy. You wouldn’t be the first and you won’t be the last.

One more thing. With the other two kings it is easy to see the gold and the frankincense. However, with the gentleman on his knees we assume that the guy on his knees actually has something in the chalice he is holding. But… we cannot see into the cup. What if … what if… his cup is actually empty and no-one else knows this is the case? Not his 2 buddies and certainly not us who are looking in on this scene. Yep, maybe there is nothing at all in his cup and he is really on his knees because he is asking for his cup to be filled. Wouldn’t that speak so very reassuringly to those times when we come empty and no-one else knows? And who are those around us today that have empty cups?

Christmass 25/12.
“Dooga Dooga Dooo”

During Advent we have used the theme  ‘The Faces She Saw’ and so we have been thinking about some of the faces that Mother Mary saw. The Angel Gabrielle, St. Joseph, The Innkeeper and The Shepherds. Today we come to another face. His face. The face of her son. And I wonder what that moment must have been like the first time Our Lady saw her son’s face.

From the perspective of a midwife, Bishop Stephen Cottrell speculates that it might have been like this.

“I sat with her. I held her hand. I wiped her brow. I told her stories of my own seven births. I felt between her legs to judge whether she was ready or not. After a few hours, my husband came out. ‘What pretty sight is this?’ he muttered angrily. ‘there are customers to be looked after and dishes to wash, you know.’ then he stomped back inside.

Her husband – Joseph, I gathered his name was – paced. He was what you might call a traditional father. He didn’t do anything. He just kept muttering – or was he praying? – that all this was from God and was safe with God.

‘Well, you’re safe with me,’ I told him. ‘now hold this cloth, and wipe her face when I tell you.’

In the darkest hour of the night, I suppose about two or three o’clock, the baby’s head appeared. He stared, blinking and gawping at the world for what seemed an age. And she was crying out with the pain of it, and the great longing for the baby to be free. It was one of those strange halfway moments between the womb and the world, between what was and what is. then with the next contraction, on a spasm of pain and joy, he was born.

I pulled him free and held him up for his mother to behold: a boy, all green and grey with the mucus of the womb and the effort of birth. I didn’t need to spank him or pat his little back. the breath seemed to rush into him, and he filled his lungs and let out a loud, piercing cry. I laughed at him. ‘Loud enough to wake the dead,’ I said to his mother, ‘or at least my sleeping tenants. He’s a strong little fella.’

I laid him on his mother’s breast. That was a beautiful moment. It always is. tender. As old as the world itself. As new as the dawn. And she moved his little face to her breast, and he suckled there, and she held him and stroked his head.”

You see how incisively Bishop Stephen captures that twinkling when Mother Mary sees the face of her child for the very first time. The intimacy, the tenderness, the love, which is so powerful and so tremendous that our cloudy language, our flimsy vocabulary dare not, cannot contain it. Our futile words can only make rash guesses, fallible attempts, half-truths. Adequacy and encapsulation are never going to happen.

“Dooga Dooga Dooo” comes just as close to describing this moment as “How stupendous”.

What is it about the face of a newborn child?

In part, it is the fresh hope that has come into the world. Here is a new life with no mistakes in it. Maybe, just maybe, through the tortuous and joyous life that is about to unfold, a new world, a better world may become a reality, especially when in our honesty we should admit that we have not left this world the place we had hoped for.

What is it about the face of a newborn child?

As parents, we glimpse something of ourselves. Through this infant, we shall leave a tiny imprint on this planet, All is not lost. Part of us, if only through our DNA, will live on even after we have drawn our last breath, just as surely as this child has taken their first breath.

Our Lady may have sensed all of this or none of it. When we are told ‘she pondered all these things in her heart’ the ‘things’ are not explained and expounded for us. Our imaginations are left to run amuck.

In that first moment when Mother sees the face of her child, a threshold is crossed and we can never go back to the way it was. You can’t put a child back into the womb and somehow reverse a birth. And when we see that face we are changed. Even our language is different. You see it yourselves and you’ve probably done it yourselves. In the googly mess of exploding waves of joy, child speak is the only appropriate language. We are made children again. Gibbering idiots, wanting to reclaim our innocence and naivety. We know that as a child we can trust and love and skip and giggle and burble. ‘Unless you turn and become like little children.’

‘Dooga dooga Dooo’ becomes our new/old mantra.

Goodness knows what we will say when we see Mother Mary’s face. Or what we will say when we see His face; especially when we discover He is looking at our face.

Dooga Googa Dooo

The art of letter writing

Some of us will have written and received Christmass cards this year. Often people will write a little letter to include with the card letting the recipient know what has been going on over the last 12 months. While I joyfully receive any card, it is the ones with an epistle inside that gives me a special joy.

Letters make us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters and the circumstances of their origin. They help deepen our understanding of these inspiring artefacts of the human condition. They are windows into the love, beauty, pain, and humour of their creators and recipients.

And these are not the only types of letters we write. Letters of complaint, job applications, thank you letters, letters requesting changes or making suggestions — the list goes on and on.

But the thing that really moves me when I receive a written letter or card is that at some level I am aware that the sender actually sat down and physically wrote this letter. Their hands touched the card I am now holding. The words on the page are in their own handwriting. They moved the pen over this card, they sealed the envelope and posted it by hand. And no matter the content, no matter how glib or trite or illegible the writing, there is a very real sense in which the sender has offered me a small part of themselves. A glimpse into their life and a physical, tangible, rereadable artefact of themselves.

Emails may connect us in a shiny, slick way but there is something more heartfelt and beautiful in a written card or letter than words on a screen. Maybe in a world that has failed to connect, we might rediscover the art of letter writing which can connect us all.

Thank You Nick Cave

Chat GPT is the official name for a computer program that can generate essays with just a few suggestive words.

The following quote is from a letter by Nick Cave about Chat GPT. It was read by Stephen Fry on a YouTube series called ‘Live Letters’

“In the story of creation, God makes the world and everything in it in 6 days and on the 7th day, he rests. The 7th day is significant because it suggests that the creation required a certain amount of effort on God’s part. That some sort of artistic struggle had taken place.

This struggle is the validating impulse that gives God’s world its intrinsic meaning.

The world becomes more than just an object full of other  objects rather it is imbued with the vital spirit, the essence of its creator.”

There is much to draw out of this. Like… the very serious matter of keeping a day off. Clergy are notorious for not doing this properly, always to their own detriment and thus to their families' angst, sadness and unravelling.

Secondly, we often think that God just clapped his hands, muttered a few well-chosen words and in a puff of smoke, everything was created with no effort at all. What if it really was like Nick Cave suggests? What if things did not come that easily to God… That there was a struggle? Wouldn’t that mean a more approachable, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate God? A God who could quite genuinely say ‘I know the work of creating is a striving and difficult.’

Finally, just as a potter imbues the pot with something of himself, so too does creation throb with the heartbeat of God. His signature, his thumbprint and his joy are all around and within.

Thank you Nick Cave for reminding us to look and listen afresh.

Advent 3

This Advent I will be offering a series of reflections with the theme ‘The Faces She Saw.’

We’ll be thinking about some of the faces that Mother Mary saw in the lead-up to Christmass and today we reflect on the face of someone who said ‘No’ to Mary.

Only Luke gives us the birth narrative of Jesus and we have this intriguing line

“And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.”

This is jam-packed with questions. Like who was it that actually told them there was no place for them? Was it the barmaid, the innkeeper, the innkeeper's mistress, or a friend of the family who just helping out in the Census rush? We are simply not told. When the rooms were filled and the animals at pasture, an inn would improvise quarters for the poorer people in the animal courtyard. The humility of Our Lord did not begin at Calvary rather began here in an animal courtyard… in a feed trough.

But someone said ‘No’. Hopefully, they also said ‘Sorry’

So at some point, there must have been a conversation. Joseph and or Mary asked the question and an answer was given.

And one of the points I would rush to make is that there is a huge difference between saying

‘No, because I just can’t. I want to, but I just physically can’t do it. '

and

saying ‘No’ because I don’t want to or I don’t like you or I simply can’t be bothered.

It’s OK to say ‘No’ if you speak it with love and moral integrity.

The common legend and that is all we have is that it was the innkeeper and while we are not told it does make sense and I will lay odds that Our Lady and St. Joseph were not the only ones shown to the animal pasture.

And I can’t help but wonder what was going on with the innkeeper’s life.

I speculate that he would not have been enamoured with the Roman government which would have taxed him with great glee and great gusto.

I spectate that he would have worked hard and not every patron would come in peaceful and well-intentioned bonhomie.

On ‘That’ night, that special night, he would have been overrun, over worked overwrought. He would I imagine be longing for the peace of his own bed and some quiet after the rowdy hubbub of the bar.

I speculate too that he would have heard the rumours of a coming king. Longed for the Messiah and maybe practised a faith. That perhaps he was tired. Tired of waiting, tired of being taxed, tired of working, tired of the drunks who are belligerent. He was so tired of the strain that the hospitality industry put on his wife, their marriage. He was just simply tired out.

His work is all consuming and all he wants is a little peace. Peace in all its forms and all its expressions.

Someone called Jason Gray wrote a poem about our mythological, but probable Innkeeper. Listen as he skillfully tells the story that we all know so well and also gives us a hint as to some of the things that we will never know. Like what was going on in this innkeeper's life, his mind and heart.

I found them standing in my door
In the clumsy silence of the poor
I've got no time for precious things
But at least they won't be wandering
If they're sleeping on my stable floor
There were no rooms to rent tonight
The only empty bed is mine

'Cause I'm overbooked and overrun
With so many things that must be done
Until I'm numb and running blind
I need rest, I need rest
Lost inside a forest of a million trees
Trying to find my way back to me
I need rest

As a boy I heard the old men sing
About a Kingdom and a coming King
But keeping books and changing beds
Put a different song inside my head
And the melody is deafening
I need rest, Oh I need rest

Like a drowning man in the open sea
I need somebody to rescue me
I need rest

To Rome we're only names and numbers
Not souls in search of signs and wonders
But we're waiting for the day of our salvation
The Messiah who will be our liberation
We're waiting, I'm waiting
I need rest, I need rest
Oh come oh come Emmanuel
With a sword deliver Israel
I need rest.

Tonight I can't get any sleep
With those shepherds shouting in the streets
A star is shining much too bright
Somewhere, I hear a baby cry
And all I want is a little peace.

St. Joseph.

This Advent I am offering a series of reflections with the theme ‘The Faces She Saw’.

We’ll be thinking about some of the faces that Mother Mary saw in the lead-up to Christmass and today we reflect on the face of St. Joseph. What I hope this particular reflection teaches us, is that the Blessed Virgin Mary was a real person, with real thoughts, real emotions and real feelings. She lived, breathed, wept, laughed, ate and drank just like everyone here. We read about her ‘God side’ so often that we easily forget that she was just like you and me. Hec, she probably even smooched Joseph. So if she were writing a memoir it might go something like this.

He was ‘the older man’ in my life. I was flattered by his second glance, the first stirrings of womanhood pooling in my stomach. My heart beating faster and lighter. He had a fizzled grey beard with soft compassionate eyes that twinkled when he saw me. I tried to hide the smile that played on my lips whenever I saw him... It came unbidden, instinctive and it was there on my face before I had even thought about it.

Sure there were plenty who muttered and gossiped about us. Glowering looks at the fish market and my parents Joachim and Anne had plenty to say about it when I told them that we were engaged. Yes, they were pleased that I would be financially secure; but Joseph?… Really… of all people. “Are you quite sure about this?” Then when I came home to tell them the bewildering annunciation and that I was now with child, Joachim left the house in a blind fury determined to teach Joseph a lesson he would never forget. Mum broke down in uncontrollable inconsolable sobs. Her body heaving and wracking, moving to a rhythm that was beyond her control. I thought all the town would hear her sobbing… and they probably did one way or the other before the sun came up.

I knew where Joseph would be and I ran to him. We had already had ‘that uncomfortable chat’ and his befuddlement and bewilderment had evolved into a deeper love, a profound respect and a steely determination to support me no matter the harsh realities that we both knew would come our way. He too had said ‘Yes’ to God’s plan. Not with an angel to explain or to help. But by dreams and thinking and praying and wrestling and hurting. This is what made him so beautiful to me. This is what made him so good for me. In his way he had fought for me and he wanted to marry me.

As he took me in his arms I felt safe, secure, complete. I was whole and it was as if nothing could ever frighten me again. It would of course, many times over in so many ways that I could not see now. Like the time when we took Jesus to the temple as an infant only to have some old cook babble on about a sword piercing my heart. Not exactly an encouraging parish priest. The three fraught, angry days we spent looking for Jesus in Jerusalem only to find him unperturbed, almost arrogant in the temple. And even after Joseph had died, his face would always be visible to me. Surely he was there with me at the wedding at Cana, with the dancing and the food and the wine. Joseph would also be there at Golgotha. I could sense him speaking to me. His voice was clearer than the sound of the iron shocking the dumb wood. His words louder than the noise of the nails tearing through the flesh. Where else would Joseph be but there with me? His sense of comforting reassurance would always envelope me. This beautiful man. This lovely face, the one who loved me even when he didn’t, couldn’t understand.

But on this night, when my dad was breathing threats and stomping all over town, I was hiding with Joseph. I turned again, kissed him and I looked at his weathered, lined face. I stroked his thinning hair and watched the helpless tears run down his cheeks.

The world, for all its bitter confusion and uncertain future, was still wonderful, bursting with promise, just as long as I could go on gazing at this tanned, wrinkled, face. Here, looking into his eyes everything was so right, all was perfect. Everything was exactly as it should be. In his arms I was ‘home’. And yet… and yet.. if this was true. If this lovely mans face was the most reassuring, comforting, exquisite sight that I could ever hope to see, am seeing and want to go on seeing… then why am I crying?

Fasting from your phone

The wizened, mature retreat Conductor grinned and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye suggested that we fast from our phones during retreat. Whether many did or not I will never know. From my perspective, I found it an interesting exercise. I only glimpsed at the screen on my phone to change the alarm so that I could awaken in time for the next dress - meal - set of prayers.

It worked well for me because I was on retreat. It would not work so well if I was back in the parish where I rely on it a bit more strenuously and frequently. I found it a liberating adventure, but a few questions came bubbling to the surface while ‘fasting from my phone’.

• Question One. On what day in recent history did we become so reliant on this gadget? I guess that as the phone was able to do more and more things we became incrementally just a little more addicted. Just a little more reliant. I remember speaking in another forum and saying ‘Our world is our phone is our world. Yes, it was a gradual transition but as far as the pace of history goes it happened rather quickly. Say the last couple of decades?
• QuestionTwo. Where would we be looking if we were successful in this venture? Ie If we weren’t looking at our screens so much, what would we be gazing at with all this spare time?
• Question Three. What would happen if we all had the occasional fast from our phones? I’m not advocating switching them off altogether, nor having them out of reach, just in case however maybe only looking at them between 4 - 5 pm each day. Could we do it? Could you do it? Could I do it?

3/12/23 Advent 1

This Advent I will be offering a series of reflections with the theme ‘The Faces She Saw’. These are supposed to be gentle dollops for us to muse over and enjoy in the frenetic lead-up to you know what. I hope that they are a lovely Advent contrast.

We’ll be thinking about some of the faces that Mother Mary saw in the lead-up to Christmass and today we reflect on the face of the Archangel Gabrielle.

So what did the Archangel Gabrielle look like? A hymn writer from a very long time ago suggested that “His wings were as drifted snow and his eyes as flame”.

This I suspect would make the arrival of the Archangel Gabrielle a terrifying event and strike the poor Blessed Virgin Mary dumb with fear and trepidation.

But that is not what we find in her encounter. It is true that Mary is troubled by the words which could mean that she is puzzled but not necessarily afraid and as we read on, puzzlement and curiosity seem to be the more likely sensations. Our Lady is up for the discussion and even asks the very curly question about how it is that she will conceive because she hasn’t had intercourse yet.

“But how can this be since I am a virgin”.

As the dialogue progresses The Archangel Gabrielle helps Mary to understand her role in God’s plan of salvation.

So I do not believe that the Archangel Gabrielle was a daunting presence or had a terrifying countenance. In fact, he brings Mother Mary more great news when he announces the pregnancy of cousin Elizabeth.

He makes God's message understandable to her and helps her to accept it with a pure heart.

My hope would be that you know such a person or if you are very fortunate you know several people who are like this.

People who make God’s message to you understandable and accessible.

And if they are very pastoral, help you to accept it with a pure heart. They encourage you to go on and do God’s work in the world. To help you realise that Your vocation is to also bring God into the world. To enflesh him in your daily life and if this is the case then how blessed you are.

Perhaps then, you see an angel when you look in the mirror. Perhaps there are times when your eyes are aflame. What if the faces you see around you today are in fact, angels? Wouldn’t that have to change the way we interact with one another?

One other thing to ponder.

We often think that it is the Blessed Virgin Mary who was bedazzled by the angel. But what if .. what if… it was the other way around? You see the Archangel knows when he arrives that this will be a defining moment for this teenage working class lass. He knows that once he steps over the threshold and asks the question Mother Mary’s life will be changed forever and there can be no going back to an uncomplicated quiet life in a rural community. Perhaps it is actually The Archangel Gabrielle who is in awe when he looks at the Virgin Mary.

Jan Richardson exquisitely captures this mirror possibility in her poem ‘Gabrielle's Annunciation’.

For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.

I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
“Do not be afraid”
to myself as much as to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and awful ‘Yes’.

There is a film called “Schindler’s List” and the storyline goes like this. Businessman Oskar Schindler arrives in Krakow in 1939, all set to make his fortune from World War II. After joining the Nazi party purely for political expediency, he staffs his factory with Jewish workers for similarly pragmatic reasons. When the SS begins exterminating Jews, Schindler arranges to have his workers protected to keep his factory in operation, but soon realises that in so doing, he is also saving innocent lives.

The music for this film is a haunting and alluring piece written by John Williams. In one of the online clips, there is a woman Davida Scheffers who has lived her dream of winning a contest and the opportunity to play this music with the Dutch Orchestra. Davida suffers from an excruciating neuromuscular condition that derailed her career, and she thought she would never get to play in a professional orchestra again. There is a young blonde lady in the audience who is her daughter and turned 18 on the day of the performance.

At the end of the clip Davida is in tears, as is her daughter and I find that my eyes are also glistening. Why? Maybe it’s the music itself, maybe it is knowing the backstory of the people in the orchestra or is it something else? Perhaps it is the unconquerable triumph of beauty against the darkest backdrop of suffering and sadness. That even in heinous war and the fragility of our body, something exquisite and magnificent can lift, inspire, move and call us. Through our gentleness and perseverance, we offer to the world the promise that this is not all there is. Through patient courage, the other dimension is accessible with something as complex and simple as a piece of music.

Of the numbers 20 and 16

The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign. This issue while uncomfortable is something that we cannot shun or pretend that it somehow doesn’t happen. This year 20 Victorian women have died at the hands of others, so clearly it goes on with brutal regularity. I also rush to point out that sometimes men are also the victims of gender-based violence. This is in a minimum of cases but it does occur.

Each of us should be concerned about this issue and our own Mothers Union holds this as a very pertinent issue. The Mothers Union's 3rd objective speaks very clearly.

“To promote conditions in society favourable to stable family life and the protection of children”.

So what to say?

Today I have no hesitation in proclaiming that violence against another is a sin.

And it's not just the victim that is affected but when violence occurs against another, we are all diminished. We are all connected and when one of our sisters or brothers is hurt, then we are also wounded. As one church leader succinctly put it. “Enough,” “To hurt a woman is to wound Christ, who from a woman, took on our humanity.”

The family unit is where safety, nurture, and the flourishing of individuals and relationships should be the norm. These relationships should be delighted in and enjoyed, for that is what God hopes for us all.  Violence in the context of the family then is particularly destructive, and absolutely contrary to a Christian way of life.

For your reflection, I offer you a surprising place, an unusual time and odd people.

In one month's time, the image that will be front and centre will be Mother Mary as she lays her child, in a feed box in a cave.

And in this one fleeting moment, when Our Lady places her Son in the cradle a couple of significant things happen.

First,  Mother Mary makes her Son available. We need to understand the miracle that happens when He is available and the thrilling miracle when we make ourselves available. This availability changes things and it must change us. The world can change, and everyone’s life can improve, if we make ourselves available to others, without expecting them to do it for us.  If we become agents of availability, we will be able to begin to mend the threads of a community torn apart by violence.

We can truly build peace only if we have peace in our hearts, only if we receive it from the prince of peace. So being available to others and for others is our commitment: By placing her child in the feed box and making Him available, Mother Mary asks us to make ourselves available for others and to others. By placing Him in a manky feed box Mary asks us to take the first step by being attentive to those who have the least.

The second thing that happens is that God is forever immersed in our muck.

His poverty, our muck, is good news for everyone, especially the marginalised, the rejected and those who do not count in the eyes of the world. Those whose scars are mental and physical and are hidden from us.

For that is how God comes: That is what is beautiful about seeing him there, laid in a manger.”

But for Mary, a mother, it must have been painful to see her son in our muck.

Contrast the amazement and enthusiasm of the shepherds on the one hand, with the quiet, pensive reaction of Mary on the other.

The shepherds tell everyone about what they have seen. They can’t shut up about it. Their exuberance and  amazement remind us of the beginnings of faith when everything seems easy and straightforward.”

Mary’s pensiveness, on the other hand, is the expression of a mature, adult faith. Her faith is not a newborn, but rather a faith that now gives birth. For spiritual fruitfulness is born of trials and testing and it takes root in, grows in and flourishes in, the muck of our humanity. The mess of you and I.

Mary gives God to the world in a dark stable in Bethlehem, Others, before the scandal of the manger, might feel deeply troubled. She does not: she keeps these things and ponders them in her heart.

And through faith, in her mother’s heart, Mary comes to realise that the glory of the Most High appears in humility; she welcomes the plan of salvation whereby God must lie in a manger available and mucky. She sees the divine child frail and shivering, and she accepts the wondrous, exquisite, divine interplay between grandeur and littleness…. divinity and humanity.

So on this day when we call to mind the atrocities against women and therefore their children, bring to mind Mary who knew how to hold together the various threads of life, the glorious as well as the worrisome. We need such people, capable of weaving the threads of communion in the midst of the barbed wire of conflict, violence and division.

You and I need to combine dreams and aspirations with concrete reality.

In these 16 days of activism, we place ourselves under the protection of this woman, the mother of God, who is also our mother. May she help us to keep and ponder all things, unafraid of trials and with the joyful certainty that the Lord is faithful and can transform every wound, every tear, and even a violent death into a triumphant resurrection.

The parable of the lunch box.

I remember with nostalgic affection the lunches that my mother used to pack me. There was the traditional sandwich, a piece of fruit, a treat and if practical, a little something left over from last night's dinner.  It was simple enough but served this growing boy well.

It wasn’t glamorous, but then that wasn’t the point. It was supposed to get me through the arduous school day. It wasn’t sparse nor was it squishy.

This wholesome image came to me the other day when I had back-to-back things carefully programmed for the day. It would always be a near-run thing as I dashed like a mad priest from one thing to the next. And then, discourteously, the phone rang and …

In my hurly-burly, I reflected that I was not doing this right. My days would be a whole lot better if I just used the parable of the lunch box to plot my time more adroitly.

My lunch box was never squished with too much in it. Try to pack too much in and nothing comes out as it should. Out of shape, a bit mangled, maybe even a bit manky.

No, we need strategic gaps that allow everything to have the space it needs.

You would think I would have learnt by now, but apparently not! So I offer these ramblings to you, dear reader. We all lead busy, frenetic lives and few of us have learnt the ways of gentle rest and to pack our lunch box days in simplicity and with care.

I am grateful to my mother, not just for nurturing with physical sustenance but also for a pragmatic lesson that would bubble to the surface 58 years later.

Remember the parable of the lunch box.