At the moment I seem to be ridiculously busy, in many different ways. Was this supposed to be the way in retirement, I wonder? On Monday I have Ventnor Guitar Club, followed by a practice for my new show- hardly work, I realise, but requiring a certain kind of application. Then I volunteer for Citizens Advice, which certainly is work, requiring various skills, both new and old. In addition I am taking a lot of services now, Sundays, funerals and a wedding in the planning. Then there’s family life and meeting and supporting friends.
Most of the time I walk out of the front door with normal clothes; today my neighbours will see me in black with a collar. What’s that all about? (They might wonder,). Am I being a different person then, or the same? I sometimes ask myself what ties all this together.
Then I read the wonderful new book by Richard Harries, ‘Wounded I sing.’ reflecting on some poems by the great English 17th C ‘metaphysical’ poet, George Herbert. Reflecting on the poem ‘The Collar’ where he tussles with the notion of freedom and the call of God, Harries writes this:
“God is the eternal, underlying ground of all that exists, the primary cause of all secondary causes. He is not one cause among many. He is not a thing in the world of things, an item in a list of items. Because he is God, in this sense, his reality is not a threat. In the case of finite things, it is often the case that the more there is of one, the less there is of others. This is not so with God: just the opposite. The more there is of God, the freer we are to be fully and truly ourselves….a true picture of God does not block our freedom. Furthermore, if God is good, all good….the more we are given over to God, the more we are on the way to realising our true good.
This having been said there may be many occasions when we are genuinely doing something we know to be wrong, and the rebellion is indeed directed against the true God. Then again, there is the call of Christ to follow Him, and that may indeed go against what we immediately want to do, so there is a genuine tussle. With Herbert there was indeed such a call, to be ordained, about which he had such mixed feelings and which indeed seemed to him to be a constraint on his life. Yet he came to discover, as so many have, that the service of God is ‘perfect freedom, a phrase used in Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer.
WE think of freedom as the choice to do one thing rather than the other, and that is indeed an important understanding of choice. But the profounder sense emerges when we think of someone who is a musician, when all their talents and energies are focussed on what they most want to do. That is when they feel totally fulfilled, when they are doing what they believe they are made for. When serving their music and following their vocation, they experience real freedom. The freedom we find in God is not one thing among others, music rather than rugby, cooking rather than running. It includes and embraces and includes all that we do, if we let it.” (Wounded I sing, Richard Harries, SPCK 2024 p78-9)
I also love this poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and theologian written in prison awaiting execution by the Nazis for plotting to assassinate Hitler. It ends like this:
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
Hugh's Views 