Tag: buffy the vampire slayer

The Paradigm Shift

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The Paradigm Shift 1 : Reading of this post

…formed the pattern and the script for your remaining days.

Robin Laing, The Summer of ’46
The Paradigm Shift 2 : Reading of this post

Having left my mp3 player at work this week, I have resorted to playing CD’s in the car, old favourites I have not listened to for a while. “Walking in Time” by Robin Laing is one of those, especially “The Summer of ’46” and “When Two Hearts Combine”. These two songs have been haunting me all week. One of the exercises we were asked to do during my formation as a spiritual director was to write a life psalm. We were invited to draw on music, poetry, scripture – anything that had had an impact on our lives. There are elements of both of these songs in mine.

Life Psalm

I belong to my God and His desire is for me

To open up to Him so that He may gaze upon me.

I met Him in the mountains and lochs,

His footprints on the grass and His mist upon my skin.

I met Him in the silence and the secret places.

I called Him with His sign.

I belong to my God and His desire is for me

To open up to Him so that He may gaze upon me.

But I was distracted and looked away.

I don’t want to talk about it because every

Day without Him hurt just a little bit more

And I had probably been crying forever.

I belong to my God and His desire is for me

To open up to Him so that He may gaze upon me.

He met me in the quiet of the morning.

He took my hand and danced with me,

Leaving only the memory.

He told me this will heal

Because Love is here, and Love is real.

I belong to my Love and His desire is for me

To open up to Him so that He may gaze upon me.

How beautiful is my Love; how amazing.

I yearn for my Love; to be only His.

He forms the pattern and the script of my days.

His desires are mine; my desires are His.

It is given. He is mine, I am His.

I belong to my Love and His desire is for me

To open up to Him so that He may gaze upon me.

There are moments of conversion in our life of faith, and there is the paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is when something that happens changes our whole way of looking at the world: it is not a little change of opinion, mind or heart, it is more fundamental than any of those, it is a change of perspective. We cannot live the way we did before when it happens. And we do not necessarily know how to live with the change within us. It may take some time to adjust.

I remember clearly the first time I experienced such a thing. I was on retreat, and I was overwhelmed by God. I had considered infinity before in wonder; I had lain on the grass and looked at the sky, both in the day time and at night and contemplated how long the sky went on for, and where did it end; I had stood at the edge of the sea and pondered its depth, its violence and its apparent lack of borders, but I had never experienced this drop in an ocean that was a drop in a bigger ocean that was a drop in a bigger ocean; knowing that what I was sensing barely even scratched the surface of what I knew was there. I was a barnacle on a ship, clinging to the surface that was everything other than the water buffeting against me; it was everything to me, my whole world, my refuge, and it had no beginning and no ending, and had always been there, and always would be there, of that, I was certain. And the experience was exhausting: I slept a lot for the next three days. Big, big, big God. All I could do was ask:

How do I live with this?

So, how did I live with it? Before this point I had been a go to mass on Sunday, cradle Catholic, getting involved in doing things, being on committees, being active, playing in the music group – all good stuff, and by the way, I really ought to pray every day. Some days I even did. But my perspective on setting aside time for formal prayer shifted from the first kind of humility to the second and I found myself acting on that deeper desire to pray by getting up earlier to make sure I had time for morning prayer; only ten minutes to begin with, but then twenty, thirty and more, forty five minutes or a full hour when I do not have to balance it with getting to work, or when I am taking some extra time in the evening. It was like rolling a snowball down a hill, once it started, it grew and took on a momentum of its own; the desire being fulfilled and augmented simultaneously.

My candle holder.
The Paradigm Shift 3 : Reading of this post

Of course, the paradigm shift is not pain free, it usually comes with a cost. I have heard it said that if you hear the same thing said about yourself from three independent sources, then it is probably true. So, drawing from that, here are three independent sources attesting to the fact that the paradigm shift is not pain free.

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, —
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.


Emily Dickinson

For were the soul not strengthened by its own endeavours, it would be unable to withstand the pain that the awareness of its own existence brings.

The Cloud of Unknowing
Becoming, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The Paradigm Shift 4 : Reading of this post

Nothing is the same afterwards, everything has changed. Life as it was before seems superficial and unsatisfactory, without really being able to explain how or why. There is the awareness that something must change: not a task list of things to do. It is knowing that the path that was visible before is not the one to stay on, and that the new path, which is not visible, has only one stepping stone from here – the next one, and trusting enough to step onto it and take the next step, in the hope that the next stone is in place before your foot makes contact with the ground. The path is laid down as we walk it.

Neither was this first time the last paradigm shift: each one brought me deeper into God, and perpetuated a change which enhanced the process: I sought a spiritual director to support me, I started drawing and painting mandalas – compulsively to begin with – to try to express my experience of prayer: I gradually became an artist. My friend the art teacher is smiling right now because I dared to say that. Finally, in the “Song of Songs” retreat the year before I wrote my life psalm and made The Spiritual Exercises, there was a complete and total surrender, leading to an election which was confirmed in the process of doing The Exercises. I had been of the opinion that I was already surrendered to God – I had handed Him a blank cheque which I had signed, had I not? But when you still reserve the right to negotiate the price, you are not really surrendered. There is a movement from:

How much? Why do you need all of that? Well, okay, I suppose so.

to an unhesitant yes.

It is given.

It is what Ignatius means by The Suscipe Prayer:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess.

Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O Lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will.

Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans Louis J. Puhl S.J.
Trebuchet, Urquhart Castle
The Paradigm Shift 5 : Reading of this post

It is finally, after a lot of difficult and hard work digging, holding the pearl of great price in your hands, the immortal diamond, a great gift He has given you, your free will, your self: it is holding all of this in your hand, considering Him for a moment, and with the ultimate act of free will, you hand it as a gift back to Him, for Him to do with as He chooses. No more negotiating, only discerning what is His desire, and then following through with it. I say that like discernment is easy, it is not, and it is where the struggle remains but once it is understood that it is God who says:

I desire it.

there is no struggle, even if His desire is for Morris Dancing! It is a once and for all, and an everyday surrender. All paradigm shifts in our spiritual journey are steps to this one. We can always keep hold of our free will, it is ours to keep or to give, once and for all, every day: it is not something that He will take from us by force or coercion, it is a gift already given by Him. Yet it is the sweetest, most blissful liberation to gift it back to Him, no matter what it costs. Doing so does indeed form the pattern and the script of your remaining days.

Robin Laing: When Two Hearts Combine

The Writing on the Wall.

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Reading of The Writing on the Wall 1

In a recent post, I put a link to the video of a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s song The Sound of Silence by Disturbed. I said it haunted me the first time I saw it, and it has been haunting me again since I posted it. The words that are playing in my head are:

And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls; and echoed in the wells of silence.

Simon and Garfunkel: The Sound of Silence

The writing on the wall occurs in The book of Daniel, one of the apocalyptic books in the Bible, where the prophet Daniel explains it to King Nebuchadnezzer:

Your days are numbered. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

Daniel 5: 26-27

It is connecting with another previous post where I had commented on some things Ignatius has to say about our attitude towards the Church. It strikes me that we are living in apocalyptic times: there is the climate crisis for one, and I studied atmospheric Chemistry for my PhD: it is not to be dismissed. And it also strikes me that the writing on the wall is a righteous act of defiance against those claiming to have authority. The words from The Sound of Silence imply grafitti, and sometimes, the grafitti written on the walls in defiance of the established authority may well be prophetic. Hazel Jones, the “Grafitti Granny” was recently caught on camera making such a protest, and her activities went viral. She wrote in chalk:

Brexit is based on lies. Reject it.

Hazel Jones, chalk grafitti on walls in Wakefield.

Sometimes it may be the right thing to do to defy the established authority. I draw on the wisdom of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to illustrate my point:

Reading of The Writing on the Wall 2

In the Buffyverse, the watchers council created the slayers, and watched over and directed them. Buffy rejected their authority a few seasons back, and her watcher Giles, was sacked. In this episode, they are trying to use vital information they have about the current foe Buffy is facing, by withholding it, in order to bring the slayer back under their control. They have demanded the final showdown in the scene, imposing their own terms and conditions, and for the most part of the episode, Buffy has been downtrodden. You could say she has been experiencing turmoil of spirits, until finally we see her, claiming her identity and insisting on self determination within that. In essence, she has discerned her path, for me, for now, for good. She speaks with authority, and everyone in the room, watchers council included, recognise her authority.

And it raises the question:

Whose authority do we accept?

We read in the gospels that the people recognised that Jesus spoke with authority:

They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority.

Luke 4:32

And considering the systemic problem in the Church I wrote about earlier, how do we discern its true authority from when something else is manifesting itself as that authority? How can we tell that it is the voice of God we are hearing and not that of the imposter? I get asked this question a lot when I am listening to people, I ask it of myself, and I ask it of the people I am listening to.

How do you know it is God?

One way is to compare it to a touchstone experience of God. These are moments when we know, without any doubt, that what we are sensing has come from God. If we hold the present experience in one hand, and notice how it feels and where it is leading: and on the other hand, hold the touchstone experience and do the same; we notice the sense of each. If the present experience feels similar to the touchstone one and is leading the soul to be inflamed with the love of God, we might trust that it is of God. If however, on comparing the two, the present experience feels jarring or odd, and is leading to a disturbance, we might discern that it is not of God, or has something not of God tangled up in it perhaps; the darnel sown in with the wheat. Ignatius gives a very useful analogy to help here: if the voice feels like water dropping onto a sea sponge, where it is absorbed gently and wholly, as if the water is part of its own substance, we might trust that to be God. If the voice feels like water dropping onto a stone, and it need not necessarily be noisy like a whole bucket full of water, it could be a quiet, almost difficult to hear, splash of one drop, then that voice is likely to be the evil spirit. Sometimes I notice that both are going on at the same time. There is the noisy, obvious, bucketful of water on a very large boulder, to which I might respond:

I know who you are and I know what you are doing!

And then I try to look for the misdirection, the one drop on a small stone that has been drowned out, the quiet, desolating whisper, telling me that I’m not good enough, and asking me who do I think I am? Who am I to be doing this? It is the voice that whispers to me that I am unworthy, and it sows fear, anxiety, despair, and seeks to undermine my confidence in what I am doing with my heart fixed on the greater glory of God.

Reading of The Writing on the Wall 3

There are many loud voices in our society, claiming to have authority; that others are spreading fake news, and sometimes it can be difficult to know which way is up. We can use our reason to check our facts, to ask ourselves about the credibility of the person speaking: are they an expert in what they are talking about? how are they informed? where are they coming from? what is their bias? their hidden agenda? their history and integrity? And we can look at the effects of their words and actions: we know them by their fruits. Do they bring people together in love, peace and solidarity, or do they sow division and hatred in the world? I am thinking here of the marches from both sides in the Brexit debacle, and the extinction rebellion protests, as well as the variety of responses to these different events on social media, as just a few examples from the public sphere.

I also watched the film “Official Secrets” recently, and it resonated with me in a similar way as Red Joan did earlier in the year.

Reading of The Writing on the Wall 4

Two women in breach of the Official Secrets act, breaking the law and acting from conscience and with extraordinary courage. I do not advocate breaking the law per say, but when we discern that the established world authorities are perpetuating evil, and the legal routes to challenge it are thwarted or exhausted, the prophets speak out, and the courageous stand up, no matter what the cost to themselves. I am humbled by people like Katherine Gun, because while I know what I would like to do, you never really know until you are in that position. I only hope that I would be able to hear God’s voice through the noise and that He would give me the grace I needed to act as He desires.

Reading of The Writing on the Wall 5

Towards the end of the 2016 film Ignacio de Loyola, there is the scene showing the “vision” Ignatius received at the Cardoner River, once he has left the cave at Manresa. Jesus, in the form of a boy, talks to him about the creature he defeated in the cave. He says to Ignatius:

Now you know my voice.

We can learn to recognise the voice of God more clearly, within ourselves and in the world, by praying with scripture, by praying the examen, with the rules for discernment that Ignatius describes in The Spiritual Exercises, and by talking with a spiritual director who can help us to apply them. It helps us to be more able to respond to the true authority of God in our lives, even when it means defying the pseudo authorities of the world who would demand our obedience. Just a final thought on the authentic voice of authority:

A lion will never have to tell you it is a lion.

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this post to an amazing friend of mine who is currently standing up to, and speaking out to a corrupt authority within her own situation. I salute you, and I am praying for you. You know who you are.

Three kinds of silence.

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Reading of Three kinds of silence, Part 1.

I described in an earlier post that I liked to read fantasy novels as a way of relaxing during the holidays, and that “The Name of the Wind”, by Patrick Rothfuss, contained a prologue which is one of the most beautiful and poignant pieces of prose I had ever read in my life. He titles his prologue ” A Silence of Three Parts”. He begins his description:

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves.

The Name of the Wind. Patrick Rothfuss

He has also written a beautiful, poignant book about one of the characters we meet in “The Name of the Wind”, called “The Slow Regard of Silent Things”.

Silence is an issue. Ignatius also writes in the power of three in the Spiritual Exercises: the first, second and third sin; the three powers of the soul, three classes of men; three kinds of humility; three times of making a choice; three methods of prayer, three principle reasons why we suffer from desolation. And in a previous post I wrote about speaking out, the opposite of silence. Hence the convergence of these three ideas here. Further, I would describe three aspects to the three kinds of silence, a sort of fractal pattern.

The first kind of silence I would describe as a literal, physical silence, something of which Rothfuss is describing above. There is a noticeable lack of it in our fast paced world. It may present as the absence of ambient noise that we selectively do not hear, it may be in holding our tongue in non verbal disapproval, or maybe even shock, at the behaviour, actions or speech of another, or it may be keeping quiet to allow another, or others, to speak in conversation or in a group setting. One thing I have noticed more and more since becoming a spiritual director is that when we are in conversation with each other, we often only listen for the pause in the conversation so that we know when we can voice our own opinion; we are not really listening to what the other person is saying. I see this a lot in the classroom: a child puts their hand up to ask a question mid explanation, and I finish my explanation before they are given the opportunity to speak, only to find that I have just explained the answer to their question in the intervening period. So intent were they in listening for the pause, that they missed the answer to the question they had put their hand up to ask. Or, during meetings sometimes, someone is speaking and making a point, and someone else, or more than one someone else, starts talking over them and the chair frequently has to step in: and of course, not just meetings, in any group conversation I notice this happening. I notice myself doing it too, and when I do, I apologise for interrupting and I attempt to correct my behaviour. So here, I want to issue you with a challenge: sit back a bit this week and listen. Where do you see this lack of silence and listening in your day to day life?

The second kind of silence I would describe is the silence of abuse. Firstly , the silence of the victim, who feels unable to speak out. Secondly, the silence of those who know about the abuse, but are unable to stop it and do not speak out. And thirdly, the silence of those who both know about the abuse and are in a position to make it stop, but do not take the necessary action to terminate it.

I wrote in a previous post about Ignatius’ description of how the enemy acts as a false lover, by whispering secrets and encouraging us not to tell, whether it is grooming or gas-lighting. He encourages us to speak out, to act against the compulsion to silence. I would like to illustrate with a story:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: We are family.
Reading of Three kinds of silence, Part 2

Tara has been gas-lighted and abused by her family all of her life, and we see her at the beginning of the scene with no sense of her own self worth. She has lied, deceived and put her friends in danger, and they have just found out. Notice the movement in her from the beginning to the end of the scene, with each intervention. Willow firstly speaks forgiveness and understanding, and she is coming from a place of love; Buffy steps in with strength and protection and the others collectively draw out the truth of the abuse. Notice how her family respond to these interventions: with the continued lies and fallacious reasoning, anger and emotional blackmail. Until finally, Tara finds courage and strength to stand, to face down her abusers and to see herself as worthy of love and life. To me, this scene is excellent in its depiction of turmoil of spirits, and Tara’s responses show movements of desolation and consolation throughout the scene. From the position of protection, coming from a place of love, understanding and truth, light is shone on the abuse and it is brought to an end, and recovery is given the opportunity to begin.

Ironwork detail from an old garden bench at Penhurst Retreat Centre.

There is no room for silence where abuse is concerned, and those who have been abused need those who know about it to listen and to act, so that they can speak out and we can collectively make it stop.

Light in the darkness

The third kind is the silence of prayer. In maintaining a silence during a retreat for example, or setting time aside at home in order to enter into that space where we can connect with God. This also includes a silence from all sorts of input via books, television, social media. It is cutting ourselves off from distractions, the urgency of the clamour that demands our attention. By silencing the cacophony of the world, we are creating a sacred space where we can enter into the depths of and with God. Imagine the feeling of walking along a beach alone, where hours pass and it feels like seconds, and now imagine that sense lasting and deepening over a period of days. It is also our silence and stillness when we place ourselves before Him to listen.

And it is also, sometimes, the silence when we hear nothing back from Him, as in the film “Silence”.

Reading of Three kinds of silence, part 3.

Such times, when we feel an absence of God’s presence, and we are consistently bombarded by the actions of the evil spirit manifested in others and in our own thoughts, it can be extremely painful and confusing. Ignatius has some useful advice to help us at such times:

…it will be very advantageous to intensify our activity against desolation. We can insist more on prayer, upon meditation, and on much examination of ourselves. We can make an effort in a suitable way to do some penance,

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. trans Loius J. Puhl S.J.

As I stated earlier, Ignatius offers three principle reasons why we suffer from desolation:

The first is because we have been tepid and slothful or negligent in our exercises of piety…

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. trans Loius J. Puhl S.J.

The second is because God wishes to try us to see how much we are worth, and how much we will advance in His service and praise when left without the generous reward of consolations and signal favors.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. trans Loius J. Puhl S.J.

The third reason is because God wishes to give us a true knowledge and understanding of ourselves, so that we may have an intimate perception of the fact that it is not within our power to acquire and attain great devotion…or any other spiritual consolation; but that all this is the gift and grace of God our Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. trans Loius J. Puhl S.J.

So Ignatius encourages us, that while God does not cause desolation, He allows it for our ultimate benefit and uses it to draw us still closer and more deeply into Him. Ignatius advises us, that when we are in a time of consolation, we consider how we will conduct ourselves in a time of desolation and that we store up a supply of strength as defense against that day. In practice, this may mean that when we are in desolation we call to mind, during prayer or during our day to day activities, memories of past experiences of consolation and savour them.

I would like to invite you this week to notice silence in your life. Where is it coming from? Where is it leading to? What are your own inner movements in the silence, and as you notice the silence?

I will end with this cover, and video, of a classic song because the first time I saw it, I was moved and haunted by it, and I pondered it for quite a while afterwards.