letitia, Author at Nuhra

Holding it all together

Posted on July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by letitia

The news of war in Ukraine is gradually drifting from our television screens. Some have said that they can no longer bear to watch images of such terrible suffering night after night on the news; the suffering of people who, until a few months ago, lived in a prosperous society very like our own.

The media, always alert to its role of mirroring the concerns of their audience, can quickly turn a blind eye.

However, one image of that suffering may remain imprinted on the memory. It is of a line of captured Ukrainian civilians crossing a quiet street. They are in single file, bowed down, each holding onto the coat of the one in front. Moments later, they have been taken out of sight behind a vacant house and executed, their bodies left like bundles of clothes on the ground.

What may come to mind if you have seen Ingmar Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal, is the closing shot of a group of people against the horizon, holding hands as they are led by Death across the screen. His film of course, is set in fourteenth century Europe as the Black Death raged across Europe, killing one in three of the population.

Both images are profoundly troubling.

In this time, when every tragedy happening across the world is there on our television screens, how do we hold it all together – our ordinary, largely peaceful, everyday lives and the terrible events happening to our human family somewhere ‘over there’. Can we continue to hold images of gaunt Ethiopian women holding their skeletal children, without eventually turning away – feeling helpless?

Somehow, we need to hold it all together, without rejecting either what we may see as our own fortunate lifestyle (although it has its own huge problems) and the chaos created somewhere by poor government or global oppression and corrupt practices.

We can hold all our human family in our heart (as well as making financial or other practical contributions). The important thing, I think, is to keep remembering them as we go about this business of daily living; to keep them in mind and in prayer without becoming hopeless, knowing that we commend them to a Heart and Consciousness that is intimately part of our human existence.

The Coming of the Light

Posted on June 9, 2022July 28, 2022 by letitia

Last week, we walked the Labyrinth For the Earth. There is a lovely Japanese myth that celebrates the earth and what comes from it. It links earth and sky together. This is a re-writing of the sketch of the story we read together. It can be found in Sansom’s Japan: A short cultural History.

The Myth of Ameratsu, the Sun Goddess. Japan.
The Goddess Ameratsu was the Shining One. She circled the sky each day bringing light and warmth and nourishment for the crops. In her light, fish swarmed in the waters of the inland sea, great trees covered the mountains and the people were happy and prosperous.
But all was not well among the gods. Ameratsu’s brothers were a troublesome lot, fighting and feuding the length of the land. They refused to listen to her pleas for peace and were particularly rude in the way they replied to her.
Offended, Ameratsu decided to take herself away from the ceaseless din of warfare. She retired into a cave, deep in the earth and stayed there, refusing the other gods’ requests to come back to her place in the heavens. Earth and the heavens grew dark and cold. All life was affected. The crops failed and the fish disappeared into the depths of the sea. The plentiful streams that tumbled from the mountains, froze. People cried to the gods for assistance but to no avail.
At last, the gods made a plan. They assembled outside Ameratsu’s cave. They covered the trees in jewels and lit a great fire that gave light and warmth. Then they joined hands and began to dance. One of the goddesses danced so wildly (and a bit disgracefully) that everyone began to laugh.
Deep in her cave, Ameratsu heard the laughter. She was curious and crept to the mouth of the cave. One of the gods was waiting there at the entrance and, as she peeped out, held up a huge mirror in front of her. Ameratsu saw her own shining beauty (which she had forgotten about in the darkness of the earth). When the mirror drew away, she followed. As she emerged, the earth and heavens were filled once more with her light, gradually at first, like the first dawn, then growing stronger as the Sun at midday. The gods and goddesses celebrated her return; the brothers vowed that they would fight no more and the whole land and the people were at peace.

This week some of us celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the first followers of Jesus. The symbols of the feast always show a descent of fire from above. In an extraordinary way the disciples were drawn from their fear-filled hiding place in the upper room, out into the streets where they must have sounded like the fiery prophetic voices of the past. Just as Ameratsu gained courage to emerge from the darkness by seeing her own light reflected back to her

Perhaps one way to think of the Holy Spirit is as a great mirror held up to each of us so that we too can know the hidden light we all hold within ourselves.

What is Cosmic Time?

Posted on May 23, 2022 by letitia

Last week, at our monthly retreat day, we took part in a guided meditation – travelling on the Road of Your Life.

It’s a popular meditation but it hadn’t been done for many years so it was a surprise to find that it still had a ‘freshness’ about it.

In a meditation like this, we tend to look back on our life and the kind of road we’ve walked – stony or smooth? And we look forward to see how we are feeling about the future: hopeful or not.

The ‘road travelled’ is mainly about past and future; linear time or ‘chronos’ time. In our contemporary Western societies time is usually seen as ‘linear’. We look back at history in a chronological way – ‘before the Christian Era’ or so many units of time after it.

This clarifies the concept of time for us; makes it manageable and concrete.

But there is another description of Time as Cosmic or Kairos-time. This experience of time happens, I think, when we have a sense of time as ‘standing still’. We seem to be in another reality which is fullness, infinite, mysterious and yet somehow familiar.

We have all had moments when time seems to stand perfectly still and we are held in that stillness; it could be a moment of utter beauty – or otherwise.

The Victorian poet, Edward Thomas, described one of these moments of what we could call ‘ kairos time’ in his little story-poem: Adelstrop.

He is in an express train travelling through the English countryside. Because of the Summer heat, everyone in the carriage is dozing. Unexpectedly, the train stops at a station, there is the hiss of steam and no other sound in the quiet afternoon. In that moment, a kind of hiatus in time, he sees the countryside with a clarity and beauty he has never experienced before.

‘And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloustershire.’

Time and space expanded for him in that moment when he was held in the stillness of the present.

(Sadly, Edward Thomas was killed not long after in the First World War.)

We can all remember moments like his – perhaps holding a newborn baby or watching a sunset or standing in the Australian bush.

Eckhart Tolle, in his book The Power of Now, urges us to practise staying in the Present. It can be quite difficult for some of us but he describes it as powerful- a different experience! Our culture doesn’t encourage us to find these moments of presence but if we can, life can expand for us and we may see things in a new light.