Fifth Sunday after Whitsun

Deus, qui diligéntibus te bona invisibília præparásti: infúnde córdibus nostris tui amóris afféctum; ut te in ómnibus et super ómnia diligéntes, promissiónes tuas, quæ omne desidérium súperant, consequámur. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum.
℟. Amen.

God, who haſt prepared for them that love thee, ſuch good things as paſs man’s under ſtanding; Pour into our hearts ſuch love toward thee, that we loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promiſes, which exceed all that we can deſire, through Jeſus Chriſt our Lord. Amen. 

Keynote: The Love of God

The outer Church teaches the power of the love of God towards us, but the hidden Church teaches the power of our love of God.

Little do we realize the tremendous potency of the yearning of the soul for the divine reality. When the whole soul goes forth seeking God out of an instinctive longing for the bread of life, it contacts the things of the Spirit at a far higher level than when it cries out for God's love to comfort it or His power to save it from its enemies.

When we seek to know God by the power of the understanding, we can rise no higher than a knowledge of the manner in which the Divine Light shines through the prism of forms. The understanding is of value to us after we have known God as He is, but not before; such studies will not take us to God; in fact, if we have no realization of the true nature of that which we seek, they may darken our vision by holding the mind fast to the bondage of form.

The knowledge of God begins when the operations of the mind end. It is by a form of consciousness which transcends thought that we apprehend spiritual realities. There is but one thing which will draw the soul across the great gulf which is fixed between matter and spirit, and that is an outgoing of strong love towards That which is on the farther side of the gulf.

Then, as we so love, in silence and in stillness, asking nothing of the love of God save that when we may love more and more, the whisper from the silence comes across the great gulf, for consciousness has "tuned in" to the keynote of God.

[Dion Fortune, Mystical Meditations on the Christian Collects]

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

   Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

   Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

   (All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing,

   In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,

   Or ever AEneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,

   When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

   (From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

    Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

   He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

   And beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

   And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

   To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

   Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

   That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad,

   Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

   'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

   Or he would call it a sin;

But - we have been out in the woods all night,

   A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth-

   Good news for cattle and corn-

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

   With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

   (All of a Midsummer morn!)

England shall bide till Judgment Tide,

   By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

ᚪ ᚫ ᚦ

Fourth Sunday after Whitsun

Da nobis, quǽsumus, Dómine: ut et mundi cursus pacífice nobis tuo órdine dirigátur; et Ecclésia tua tranquílla devotióne lætétur. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum.
℟. Amen.

Grant, O Lord, we beſeech thee, that the courſe of this world may be ſo peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully ſerve thee in all godly quietneſs, through Jeſus Chriſt our Lord. Amen.

Keynote: "Thy Kingdom Come"

The true lover of God desires to see the coming of the kingdom on earth among men. The prayer, "Thy kingdom come" is not an idle form of words for him. Do all of us, who repeat these words mechanically as part of the Lord's Prayer, realise their significance in relation to the world's affairs? The next words of the prayer give us the clue - "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

God's will is the cosmic law, and the cosmic law is not an arbitrary enactment, but the expression of God's nature. That nature was shown forth to us in the life of Christ Jesus. There, then, we have our model. God's will is done when we live Christ-like lives. If everybody did this, His kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not a place, or yet a form of government, but the state of consciousness which has become habituated to the Christ-ideal and dwells constantly in it. [Generally speaking, the Kingdom of Heaven is understood as the spiritual potestas of the Church, as opposed to the mere human authority of kings, princes, politicians, etc. - Ed]

The kingdom comes first in our own hearts; and in so far as we realize its nature we can bring it into being in the world of men, in spite of all difficulty and opposition, by consistently and determinedly bringing each one our actions into line with that ideal.

It is only through a change of individual  consciousness that the kingdom of heaven will come on earth. No form of government can bring it, because it is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. It proceeds spontaneously from an attitude of mind and state of feeling; it cannot be enforced from without by laws and magistrates. Outward force may produce civil order, but it can never produce "peace and joy and godly quietness," and these are the signs by which we know that "the Lord keeps the city".

[Dion Fortune, Mystical Meditations on the Christian Collects]

The ale-wife who gave short measure dragged to hell, misericord, Ludlow, combining #woodensday & #NaughtyThingsInChurches as I’ll be missing
#AnimalsInChurchesHour pic.twitter.com/6c7dUt3ZUL

— Posy Hill (@PosyHill1) July 22, 2020

Third Sunday after Whitsun

Protéctor in te sperántium, Deus, sine quo nihil est válidum, nihil sanctum: multíplica super nos misericórdiam tuam; ut, te rectóre, te duce, sic transeámus per bona temporália, ut non amittámus ætérna. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum.
℟. Amen.

God, the protector of all that truſt in thee, without whom nothing is ſtrong, nothing is holy: Increaſe and multiply upon us thy mercy; that thou being our ruler and guide, we may ſo paſs through things temporal, that we finally loſe not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jeſus Chriſt’s ſake our Lord. Amen.

Keynote: The Two Standpoints

There are two standpoints from which we can look at life: the standpoint of the lower self, with its background of Spirit. The higher self is developed and awakened by means of the experiences which fall to the lot of the lower self in its struggles with life in the flesh. When the struggle is painful and unavailing, when the denial of the pleasures of the senses and the gratification of human desires forces us to seek a higher aid, when the barrenness of external things forces us to look within, we are in little danger of becoming enmeshed by matter. But when the lower self is on a flowing tide of prosperity, or when it is spurred by a fear for the loss of its accustomed flesh-pots, we are all too apt to live exclusively in things temporal and lose sight of the eternal values by which the soul's account must ultimately be balanced.

Even more in prosperity than in loss do we need the contact of the spiritual forces, or, to use the old phraseology, the blessing of God, to rest upon our lives, lest we forget the purpose of life, which is the evolution of the soul, not the gratification of the senses. Let us measure all things against a background of infinity, and life itself will become for us the way of enlightenment.

[Dion Fortune, Mystical Meditations on the Christian Collects]

Political Magic

This blog was never supposed to be about politics per se, but my eye was drawn to this in the online edition of The European Conservative.

The ever acerbic and cantankerous David Starkey is in fact completely correct to condemn "magical thinking". And for what it's worth, I think our own polity currently needs "re-enchantment" like a hole in the head. His problem of course is his mad libel that the Christian religion is "magical". It's a claim derived, although he himself is an atheist, from his native Protestantism, and before that from mediaeval English Lollardy. For this Sebastian Morello rightly takes him to task.

What Catholics mean by "magic" (in the sense of "black" magic) is the use of any manifestly inadequate means to achieve a specific end - which necessarily implies either a test of divine providence or a deal with the Devil. In either case a mortal sin against the First Commandment. The two worst sorts of magical thinking in politics at the moment are domestically that we as a nation can live permanently beyond our means and internationally that we can somehow retire from the world's stage and become a private but prosperous backwater state, safe and secure without our own island borders.

The former delusion can be summed up as a simple denial by the political Left of economic reality. There is, for example, no reason at all to think that the bond market will "fall into line" with an ever more spendthrift HMG. On the Right, meanwhile, there is still a vague idea that some sort of "social" conservatism can somehow just happen without a radical change to our established economic assumptions. To paraphrase Mrs Thatcher though, there can be no conservatism unless there is economic conservatism. In Starkey's case, this would be "cultural" or perhaps even "constitutional" conservatism, and in Morello's case it would be some sort of esoteric traditionalism - although to be fair to him in practice that would include actual "moral" and "religious" conservatism as well.

The tragic results of magical thinking in foreign policy, on the other hand, which ultimately come from the West's collect decision to "decolonise" the rest of world, have by now become only too apparent for those who have eyes to see, as the enemies of our country and of our allies have only become ever bolder. As Kipling put it

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the resurgence of Arab terrorism in Israel were all easily foreseeable and avoidable. Perhaps it's not quite fair to attribute wishful thinking, magical thinking, or any sort of thinking at all to someone like Joe Biden. But all it took for evil men to succeed was for those who just imagined it could never happen to do nothing.

Than with a glad chere our Lord loked into His syde and beheld, enjoyand; and with His swete lokyng He led forth the understondyng of His creture be the same wound into Hys syde withinne. And than He shewid a faire, delectabil place and large enow for al mankynd that shal be save to resten in pece and in love. 

[The Tenth Revelation]

 St Margaret of Scotland and her siblings, showing their descent from King Edmund Ironside of England
(BL Royal 14 B VI; H/T: Eleanor Parker)

Second Sunday after Whitsun

Sancti nóminis tui, Dómine, timórem páriter et amórem fac nos habére perpétuum: quia numquam tua gubernatióne destítuis, quos in soliditáte tuæ dilectiónis instítuis. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. ℟. Amen.

O Lord, who never faileſt to help and govern them whom thou doſt bring up in thy ſtedfaſt fear and love; Keep us, we beſeech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name, through Jeſus Chriſt our Lord. Amen.

Keynote: The Good Law

When we are beset with the difficulties of daily life, when its tragedies overshadow us, we ask ourselves whether there is indeed a divine law ordering all things, and, if there be such a law, is it responsible for all the misery and useless suffering we see about us.

One thing is self-evident - if no law ordered the universe it must long ago have shaken itself to pieces from sheer friction. Why should we conclude that natural law stops short with the lower animals?

When we come to consider man, with his intelligence and a will sufficiently free to be a determining factor in his fate, we have to expand our conception of natural law to include those higher aspect of his nature, latent in many, subconscious in most, but conscious in a few, which, for lack of a better term, we call spiritual. Surely the spiritual aspect of man's nature is just as natural as the emotional. It is neither a pathology nor a miracle, but a higher stage of evolution. It may be having a hard struggle for survival in the present age, but nevertheless, we can see that it is going to inherit the earth in due course of evolutionary time.

May we not believe that there are natural laws of the spiritual plane of existence which govern this aspect of man's nature, and are vital, though disregarded factors in the polity of nations, which, when broken, are responsible for the mass of human misery we see about us, just as the laws of hygiene, when broken, are to us the administrators of disease? Should we attribute to divine wrath the results of man's ignorant wilfulness? Can we plead ignorance as an excuse after God has given us a standard of manhood in Christ Jesus our Lord? We all know better than we do. It is the cumulative effect of human shortcomings that piles up the sum of human misery.

If every single human being were pure, and diligent in his Father's business, and compassionate, the world's misery would be wiped out in one generation. For think what it would mean: sensuality would no longer bring into the world weakly bodies and depraved minds, and spread the racial poisons; selfishness would no longer ignore human needs and cause the poverty diseases; self-indulgence and sloth would no longer produce their inevitable results. Death would come to us in the calm sleep of old age or the swift extinction of accident, even as it comes to the animal kingdom under natural law.

We must keep God's law, not cry out against it; and being our brother's keeper, must suffer with him when all creation groans and travails together. But if in all our ways we love God's law and fear to break it, then will He never fail to help and govern us, and the first earnest of the fulfilling of His law will be the inner peace that comes to us, even amidst the human confusion that still overspreads the earth.

[Dion Fortune, Mystical Meditations on the Christian Collects]

Well Dressing

Wendy Greatorex's design at Hands Well depicted Jesus offering fellowship, a celebration of 100 years of Winnie the Pooh, and a nod to the 75th anniversary of the Peak District National Park

['I have been dressing Peak District wells for 40 years' - BBC News]