The Divine Contemporary

A siren sounds over the rain-sodden city.
A lonsesome lament.

With a virus, and working too hard over the weekend, I haven't managed even the ten minutes a day for this journal. though this morning, I wrote a column, prompted by Uli's exhibition - I fear she won't like it. Now, I feel wrecked.

But compelled to write notes for a further column, on contemporeneity - reading Negri's notes from the 80s, from exile, searching for hope, from the poetic, artistic, impulse - which all leftists do when those doors close on their historical project (Benjamin, Marcuse, Horvat), a leap of existentiaist faith (and the Yugoslav guy from the 90s). Plus a Danish art theorist.

Recognising Patterns

D asked me to write about what I see that is beautiful. Some days it's hard. this morning, I made notes, powerpoint on sticks, for a streetlevel Theology session on Angels. They are a window on to a larger reality, a bigger screen, on to the existent. The (re)enchantment of the world - numinous and transcendent; their appearances are strange, weird, interruptions of the quotidian, and point to the glory of the One who made them, and whom they serve; not ends, nor means, indications of Glory: Peter Berger's 'rumours', 'signals'. It's not a dimension which I, or many in the secular West, move in. But the presence of people from the Global South may serve to re-open the door to the supernatural.

The Angelic Real

Beauty today? No time for anything. Work and disappointment - with X announcing his resignation. Surprising and unexpected. He was doing a good job. I will miss him. But beauty? Y's verbal expresssion of support, comparing me to Brazilian pastors. That's beauty, after a fashion: encouraging.

And doing some work on Angels for Streetlevel theology. That's beauty too, in a weird sort of way - a re-version of the disenchantment of reality by modernity. Not that we should revert to an enchanted world, where there was magic, but also fear, lest we fail to propitiate the magical but malevolent powers. But still, a world full of mystery and beauty: yes, mystery too. The bignesss of the world: the expanse, and expansiveness, of reality.

Doorway to the Divine

Was there anything about beauty today? Not obviously. I cycled in the autumn sun, cold and bright. I talked with the counsellor about writing, and she commented how it comes easily, flows readily. I wrote a column yesterday, based on reflections in this journal: it was straighforward and simply. I enjoyed doing it, and I enjoyed having done it - the act and the accomplishment.

Is this beauty? Is it an entry, a doorway, into God, into the Divine? Surely it is: even when not actively about God as such, by name, it partakes of his nature, which is 'beauty'. To reach toward the numinous, the transcendent, is to reach towards God - personal being or even the stratum of reality, general and impersonal, which is the Divine, the Sacred.

Meditation on Sadness

A low sun, milky, through bare trees, shedding leaves, brown, yellowing, and lying on the ground; fountains playing, cold, white, splashing - it is Autumn in Russell Square; bright but cold. One South American friend commented, surprisedly, on how it could be, at the same time, both sunny and freezing. And today is the first time this autumn that it's felt bitter, hurting my ears as I cycle through the city.

Death Cult

Through a window, which was closed, I saw, and heard, the browning leaves of a tree, blowing in the wind: a recent radio programme mentioned a study on the music, the sound, which trees make, each one unique - the 'susuration of trees'. And this one too, in the autumn - like Eva Cassidy's song of 'Autumn Leaves' - her own life cut short, abruptly and too early; autumn coming too soon.

And this day too, was Remembrance Day. I was asked to lead a short ceremony to commemorate it - by a lady, M, who had two poems she wanted to read. But she was unable to come in the end, because she had to be admitted to hospital - her bloood pressure too high. A sadness that she whose idea it was, couldn't finally be there. Yet another sign of age, of ageing, and eventual death. The autumn bespeaks the cycle of birth, life and death. Appropriate for this ceremony, marking the passing of many, and praying for peace.

Beauty is Love

Beauty is love. A parent's love for an autistic child:  beautiful, clever, funny, amazing - but also ill-at-ease, ill-adapted, to social life, to school, to relating, to noise, to the complications - of situations.

And a parent who, belatedly, recognising their own precarious position on the very same spectrum, learning how the emotional and physical, reactions, responses,they had exhibited their whole life, were actually symptoms, of a disorder, which had made their early marriage, their youthful upbringing, early attempts at art, performance, so painful, so agonising, as they had tried to navigate the attitudes and actions of others, failing to comprehend the subtle, and not-so-subtle, often hostile and antagonistic, behaviour of these strange beings, called 'people'.