Liturgies

Peter  Breen was a Wesleyan Methodist minister for 20 years – 11 years in Bundaberg, 7 years at Everton Hills and 2 years in Melbourne. He is the co-founder and Director of Jugglers Art Space in the Valley, Brisbane.

Peter usually attends the 5 o’clock liturgy with his wife Maeve (Mavis).

FIRST READING

Taken from "The Garden of the Beloved" Robert Way, Doubleday 1975

THE BEAUTIFUL

Said the Disciple to the Lover, "Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?"

The Lover answered, "Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought for Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.

SECOND READING:

Taken from "The Garden of the Beloved" Robert Way, Doubleday 1975

THE MOTHS

One evening as the Lover and the Disciple were sitting by the light of a candle a moth flew around the candle and seemed to warm itself in the flame. Seeing this the Disciple said, "Sir, surely this moth is like a Lover who warms himself in the love of the Beloved."

"No, my son," said the Lover, "This is like an unworthy seeker who although he perceives the love of the Beloved yet for fear that he should lose that which he has does not approach near the heat of His love."

A little later after this moth had flown away, another moth came which flew so near the flame that its wings were scorched and all the lovely colours burned off them, after which is flew out into the darkness.

Then the Disciple said, “Surely this moth must be like the true Lover of the Beloved, for see, by reason of the great love which it bore the flame, its wings are scorched and all its lovely colours departed.”

“Not so,” said the Lover. “This moth is like a timorous Lover who although he has tasted the joy of the Beloved yet when he feels the first searing pains of love flees from the flame and forsakes the Beloved.”

Then another moth flew in, which as soon as it perceived the candle did not flutter around it as the others had done but flew straight to it and throwing itself into the flame was utterly immolated, becoming one with the flame itself.

“See,” said the Lover, “Like this is the true Lover of the Beloved, for thinking of nothing else he throws himself utterly into the burning love of the Beloved.”

PRAYER

Michael Leunig

We simplify our lives. We live gladly with less. We let go the illusion that we can possess. We create instead. We let go of the illusion of mobility. We travel in stillness. We travel at home. By candlelight and in stillness, In the presence of flowers, We make our pilgrimage. We simplify our lives.

GOSPEL Luke 19 : 28-40

I can remember that as a child I once asked my parents “Is there a king of the world?”

Lately I have been asking myself “Where is Gough Whitlam when you need him?”

But there is no one person who can fix everything or everyone or who can finally and forever resolve community conflicts.

There is no one person who can lead us into the land and fantasy of our best dreams.

There is no one piece of music, one work of art,  one holiday, no one experience, or vintage red, no  “this is the greatest show ever” that will transport us to never ending worlds unknown forever.

There is no one medical procedure that will stop the stalking tread of death and dying

But as humans we still live in that perpetual optimistic hope that we will find Nirvana – whatever that looks like in our imaginations.

It seems as if we hunger for a saviour , a saving experience a salvation that carries us into our deepest sweetest dreams, hungers and fantasies verbalised or hidden deep beyond our ability  to articulate.

It might be that we pursue our saviour and our salvation through rejecting the notion of salvation and in so doing trust our own open ended convoluted philosophies and logic.

Maybe even our not caring about any of this could be a vague hope for salvation.

In the well known Lukan Palm Sunday narrative, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey feted by the people with rugs and branches fit for a king and ruler of the times and in so doing evoked the hope of salvation from oppression by the masses who had come to love and follow him.

He had become the rising star on the horizon of the dreams of the people of his day in Israel, a saviour in the making for this poor, hounded and religious nation which clung to its messianic vision of liberation and freedom.

This Jesus was becoming gold plated with few but profound words, apparent healings and exorcisms and  as a fearless confronter of the ruling religious and law making elites.  He was looking like the hope dreamed for, the saviour promised, even the Messiah…

A couple of weeks ago I trudged up the stairs at the Boondal entertainment centre and sat enthralled at how a 67 year old Neil Young could hammer out his repertoire for 2.5 hours. And down in the body of the venue were the head banging palm branch wavers. Here was their king, their saviour, their salvation experience for 2.5 glorious hours.

About 3 weeks ago I was with a group of young street and graffiti artists at Stoneham Lane Stones Corner painting a wall for some of the local businesses when lo and behold the local member for Griffith arrived on the scene, said “Hi I’m Kevin, what’s your name” and proceeded to charm the lads with his group photos. Once, for some, this former PM was a donkey rider and we were the palm branch wavers.

Kevin Rudd was sacrificed on the altar of political intrigue – maybe twice now.  I would suggest that just one week after Jesus rock star donkey ride, Jesus suffered the same fate at the hands of the political elites. There of course the similarity ends but popularity and crowd euphoria as one expression of the hope of salvation are as transient as mist in the morning – whether you are Jesus, Kevin Rudd or Neil Young.

When the mist has gone, when the crowds have changed their mind and are baying for blood, when the songs are old and dead in the water, what is left?

As we move towards Easter through this Lenten period my question for reflection is – what was it that held Jesus, what were his deepest non negotiable values, what stream and current flowed deeply and inexorably in, into and from him and refused to be dammed up?

I am convinced that Jesus was immersed in the knowing and the loving of God the eternal  lover. Over his life  Jesus the man came to find the flow, he came to know what it meant to be fully human  and fully alive.

Being fully human and fully alive is being consciously and knowingly immersed in the spirit of god.

As a human he had found the mysterious flow of the spirit as THE essence of being and  as the real conscious existential constant.

From what we read in the gospel narratives the early morning prayers and desert retreats into quietness were essential for him as a human being to renew his immersion in the flow.

All of his activism and teaching and loving of people flowed from being consciously immersed in that flow and  renewing it  in the desert – finding god, not as an interventionist god but as the god of living and being – the water in the water, the life in life, the light in light.

I wonder if this is what it means to be fully human for us?

I believe it is and it is not beyond any of us and is not dependent on temperament. But we need the kind of determination of the Jesus person.

As Bob Dylan sings in Narrow Way:

It’s a long road

 Narrow Way

I'm gonna walk across the desert, 'til I'm in my right mind. I won't even think about, what I left behind Nothing back there anyway, that I can call my own Go back home, leave me alone It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday

In his book “Reasons of the Heart” former Australian Anglican Bishop Bruce Wilson writes about what he sees as the cornerstone of finding the flow of the spirit - theophany. His view is that Theophany is normative for humans but that we constantly miss these outburstings of god in our lives .

As he unpacks his idea he uses historical and current day examples of theophonieas of St Paul, Tolstoy, Thomas Merton, and Patrick White:

He quotes from White’s autobiography “Flaws in the Glass”:

During what seemed like months of rain, I was carrying a tray load of food to a wormy litter of pups down at the kennels when I slipped and fell on my back, dog dishes shooting in all directions. I lay where I had fallen; half blinded by rain, under a pale sky, cursing through watery lips a God in whom I did not believe. I began laughing, finally, at my own helplessness and hopelessness, in the mud and stench from my filthy old oilskin. It was the turning point. My disbelief appeared as farcical as my fall. At that moment, I was truly humbled.” P3

I have been on a journey of inquiry to know god existentially, knowingly since I was about 21.

Now in this second half of my life there is a greater hunger for it.

As we heard about the three moths and their experience of the candle in the reading from that beautiful little book “The garden of the beloved” I sense that I am moving closer to the burnt wings moth but not the one who plunged into the flame. Bu I am not far off.

As an expression of this hunger, last year I invited a small group of visual artists to join me at Jugglers over 3 separate occasions to listen to some playlists of new and old composers and to respond collaboratively as a group – without speaking to each other  - by producing a body of painted works on canvas.

I knew that it would produce a profound experience and new friendships and interesting art works but would any of us have a theophany similar to Patrick White? Would any of us be enticed to fling ourselves into the flame of the heat and heart of the spirits love? Could such a structured environment affect a theophany or is theophany too mysterious to affect? Taking my cue from Jesus and the mystics, I saw this at least as a silent retreat for artists intent on making sense of life.

To slow down with the intention of finding a threshold that opens into another space where we have never been before is what might be needed by all of us if we are to find the flow of the spirit for all living.

Please take the time now to watch the short excerpts from WSI and the sound track by Gavin Bryars “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.”

At the conclusion of this homily was a short film clip from an event that Peter coordinated and produced in 2012. A small group of artists at Jugglers were invited to collaborate on painting a response to a piece of music by British Composer/Musician, Gavin Bryars in an attempt to create a desert retreat in an art gallery.

WS Video.