John of the Cross - a master of the mystical tradition

 Picture at left is from here

To-day is the Day of Remembrance of John of the Cross - the writer of the mystical classics, The Dark Night of the Soul and The Living Flame of Love and more.

For those who would wish to read the works of John of the Cross, please be introduced to a marvellous website for reading - for free - the riches of the Christian tradition, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.  This site is a storehouse of great treasures available to all.  For the works of John of the Cross, please go here.

A quote for to-day from The Living Flame of Love:

... He loves thee with liberality, without self-interest, only to do thee good, showing joyfully His countenance full of grace, and saying: 

I am thine and for thee, and it is my pleasure to be what I am, that I may give Myself to thee and be thine.  

Who then  shall describe thy feeling, of blessed soul, when thus beloved, and so highly honoured?

We chose not to hear and to silence .........Richard Flanagan

Red poppies for #Remembrance. White poppies for #Peace. Let's start to wage #Peace not #War

Picture below from here

To-day is Remembrance Day in Australia. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation falls silent for two minutes. Red poppies are in lapels and in the laid wreaths at shrines, cenotaphs and memorials across the country. Red poppies are massed against the names of the war dead at the Australian War Memorial in the national capital, Canberra.

There are news reports to-day that the print media reporting on Remembrance Day is muted compared to that of previous years.  Why is this so?  Is this because Australia is immersing itself in military action at this time in the Middle East?

If we mute our response to Remembrance Day and its memory of "the war to end all wars", is it time to ask the penetrating questions?

• Do we put the same financial, acquisitive, organisational, and human effort into waging peace as we do to waging war?  

• Are we prepared to stand up and say to our government that we want it to pay as much attention to training for peace, preparedness for peace, arming for peace, strengthening the ramparts of peace as we do for training for war, preparing for war, arming for war, strengthening the ramparts of war?

One of the most interesting bodies of literary work in English in the 20th century is the "Testament" series by Vera Brittain - Testament of Youth, Testament of Friendship, Testament of Experience. The experience/s that impacted Brittain's life in World War 1 made her a lifelong pacifist and fighter for peace.  Between the two world wars, she was active in the establishment and the promotion of the League of Nations. She also became a member of the Peace Pledge Union and its offshoot, the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. The secretary of the Australian chapter of the latter, is Bishop Philip Huggins.

The Peace Pledge Union is notable for its White Poppy campaign.  Many people in Britain wear two poppies - the red for remembrance, the white for peace.

Listen to the song in honour of Vera Brittain

written by Sue Gilmurray

A Sabbath thinking piece - #1

One of my favourite internet sites is brain pickings. It is compiled by the wonderful Maria Popova.  The site is full of stuff which reflects its title.  I wanted to include it for the readers of Advocacy as a thinking piece, a reflective interlude. And to introduce you to a site which is part of the treasure trove of good things to be found on the 'net!

Mary Oliver (b. September 10, 1935) is among the most beloved and most prolific poets of the past century — a devoted craftswoman of exquisite poems and a sage of the secrets of the craft itself.

In this recording from a 2001 event held by the Lannan Foundation — the same reading that gave us Oliver on the magic of punctuation — the beloved writer reads the poem that would go on to become one of her most celebrated and lend its title to her 2004 volume Wild Geese: Selected Poems (public library). Oliver’s work speaks so deeply and with such courageous honesty to some of our most profound human perplexities, struggles, and exaltations that it is read everywhere from commencement addresses to yoga classes, endlessly replicated on the social web and borrowed for those formulaic chapter-opening quotations in pop-psychology and self-help books. And yet despite the vast exposure, something singular, something mesmeric and immutably moving happens as Oliver swirls the intricate thought-things of her poem in her own mouth — to say nothing of the impossibly charming George Eliot anecdote with which she prefaces the reading:

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Wild Geese: Selected Poems is a soul-stretching read in its entirety. Complement it with Oliver’s deeply endearing Dog Songs, one of the best books of 2013.