" Incline towards me, Merciful One, poor fallen, thinking tree. Make me flower again in beauty and splendour, deign to cast your glance at me out of the concern of your inexpressible love ... you will create within me light itself."

Gregory of Narek c.944-1010, Armenian monk and poet.

All Saints’ Day

During the night my prayer merged into a dream. Mary and Elizabeth, as portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci, were talking. Mary showed Elizabeth the radiance of the Lord. On the 11th November another Mary was touched by glory as she fell asleep in death. The rain was falling heavily, with puddles on the grass and small pools on the paving stones. The heavens were reflected on earth in these mirrors of water, adorned with leaves.

Rain continued to fall for many nights and days. The momentary glimpses of the sun, and small rainbows, lightened the apparent drabness of the days. Yet the leaves still shone golden on the autumnal trees, and patterned the ground in subtle mutations of colour.

Some days later, on Sunday, when I went into the garden before Morning Office I could actually see the trees, and the lovely variation of grey in the trees and sky before the sun’s rays reached over the horizon. The distant trees looked quite bare but their tiny branches made fascinating patterns. One old and venerable red horse-chestnut had twigs which made its canopy look like a large, slightly torn, spider’s web. Another had twigs growing upwards, rather like an old besom. Yet another had branches and twigs like wings. There are so many repeat patterns in the natural world, and much economy.

Another Remembrance Day sounded its bugle call, and prayer covered a century of war, death, desolation and mourning ... and still we have not learned that one culture cannot absorb another, like an amoeba, and then spew it out undamaged.

Building works locally, on land which once was part of a monastery, has revealed more historical artefacts. The foundations of the new complex went deeper than that of the former Police Station, a monstrosity which looked as though concrete had been fired at it from a cannon. A broken stone coffin lid was found, carved with a symbolic Tree of Life, with some birds at the foot of it. Lower still the traces of a Roman villa have been discovered. Our personal history is something like that, with bits and pieces emerging, reminding us of the past.

Preparing for Advent

The dark mornings of November, with mist veiling trees and bushes, are the herald of Advent in England. The leaves have fallen in splendour, the harvest gathered in, and we expect life to slow down into a contemplative season of pale sunshine and mist. Yet it is not so. Each tree has buds, beautifully formed, strongly protected. This is the season in which new life begins, veiled in mystery. But it is also the time when preparations for Christmas surge forward, often overwhelming our desire to be still and aware. Our social obligations can become restless waves beating against the rock on which the Lighthouse stands. The Lighthouse can represent our Christian faith, with the waves of secularism trying to obscure the light. Yet all is not lost!

Our very planet has survived millions of years of cataclysmic change, with the slow evolution of life which could - for a time - exist on earth. Life in its essence was never lost. Mankind has received a spiritual gift, an awareness of something much more profound than the material world and physical life. In spite of our increasingly secular culture - or because of it - there is an ever widening quest for the spiritual in society, which flows around the established Churches, seeing them as part of the problem. It is in this situation that monasteries of monks and nuns, of whatever faith, may be lighthouses, keeping the flame burning through prayer and silence. Their enclosures may be experienced as havens of peace to visitors and guests, while the monks and nuns feel the battering of the waves!

While the world around us seems ‘smaller’ through rapid communication and travel, our interior world may reveal itself as larger and more mysterious. It was old cartographers who wrote on uncharted areas of the world "Here be Monsters", and now we may have to write the same on the uncharted areas of the human psyche. Each of us has a personal world which we alone can explore and enter. Dreams may present us with glimpses of what lies deep within us, baffling, frightening, but with touches of light and hope.

Perhaps we can enter Advent with a desire to see the mysteries of God, and how they have permeated our being. Within the secular culture which surrounds us there are traces of the symbolism which has enriched the spirit of man from the beginning. I wonder what symbols you associate with Advent, and what meaning do they have for you?