This last fortnight, I have found great joy in sitting with another insightful expression from Christopher Bamford’s, The Voice of the Eagle, an exposition on Erigena’s homilies on the Prologue to John’s Gospel. Speaking of our relationship to the Word, who lovingly calls forth and underpins all creation, Bamford expounds,
                        Above all, the Word is where I take my stand
                         when I stand at the centre and origin of all.
                       The Word is where I am when I am who I am.
How deeply centring that flowing, lyrical sentence is for me. “The Word is where I am when I am who I am”. To me, it truly feels like home-ground. “The Word”, who is from the beginning and was with God and was God, “is where I am when I am who I am!"
May you, this week, have a sense of standing in the Word, who is your home-ground, and may you sense, too, that the Word is where you are when you are who you are.


Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee  
                                                                                 Photo of Karri Tree at Donnelly River - B Holliday

Over this last while as Lent has moved into Holy Week, God has continued to seem more absent than present to me, and an inner sense of flatness has persisted. So I was taken by surprise when the words of a poem by Mark Jarman jumped out at me, and they have been resonating with me ever since. Jarman’s poem, “Unholy Sonnet 4”, ends with the words,

This love shows
Itself in absence, which the stars adore.

It has been comforting to me that God’s love can show itself in absence, or in “loving emptiness” as Jarman’s poem says in an earlier stanza. It is also comforting that the timeless, countless stars which surround me in the night sky adore the love which shows itself in the absence, the blackness, the emptiness which surrounds them. If they can accept and adore such love, then maybe I can too. As you travel with Christ’s passion through Holy Week, may you also be aware and comforted by the love that “shows itself in absence”.


Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee  
Photo from OpenABC

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I feel quite melancholy. I feel like I am weeping inside, and any depressing news, even if it is from friends or the Bible readings for the day, makes me feel more melancholy. I try to find the gift in feeling flat; the fact that it allows me downtime after a period of sickness or stress reminds me of the mysterious depth of my soul. It can, I reflect, be an appropriate mood for Lent. To find wisdom in my times of melancholy, I often turn to the gift of the poets. This week, words from a poem by Mechthild of Magdeburg spoke to me,

I cannot dance, O Lord,
Unless You lead me.
If you wish me to leap joyfully,
Let me see You dance and sing.
So, Mechthild’s prayer has become my prayer this week. I cannot find the energy and joy to dance, so may the Lord of the Dance, the Lord of Love, lead me in the dance. If you are feeling flat, finding it difficult to pray, and difficult to engage with God and yourself, then may Mechthild’s prayer be your prayer too.


Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee  

This past week I have been at a coursework residential where we focussed on the topic of apophatic theology, or the unspeakable mystery of God. It is theology which tries to talk about what is beyond our comprehension, when all language and metaphors about God break down and are stripped away. This is a space of darkness and mystery where we can feel the absence of God, where we find ourselves bereft of God as we have known God in the past. It raises the question of “How can I love God who is beyond my comprehension?”, and “How can I love God when I feel the darkness of being bereft of God?” Dag Hammarskjold asks this same question in his journal, Markings. He writes,
“But how, then, am I to love God?”
His answer is an attempt to express in words what goes beyond words,
​“You must love Him as if He were a non-God, a non-Spirit, a non-Person, a non-Substance: love Him simply as the One, the pure and absolute Unity in which there is no trace of duality. And into this One, we must let ourselves fall continually from being into non-being. God help us do this”. (110)
It is his phrase, “into this One, we must let ourselves fall continually”, which strikes me most deeply. For me, it is falling into the mystery of God, the darkness of the unknown and incomprehensible depth of God. My imagination takes me back to my childhood memories and the soothing, safe, and comforting feel of velvet. So, I imagine myself falling backwards into the dark velvet of God’s infinite, unknowable, loving depth. It’s a depth that embraces, welcomes and holds me, and yet I am continually falling. As we move into the season of Lent, entering a time of mystery, darkness and stripping away, may we allow ourselves to continually fall into the mystery and darkness of the One who loves us beyond comprehension.


Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee  
Photo by Andrew Neel: from Pixabay

Over the Christmas break, I finally managed to read Dag Hammarskjold’s book, Markings. It has been on my “to read list” for a while. Hammerskjold was the second Secretary General of the United Nations, and as I read his writings he comes across as a driven man, who set very high standards for himself. However, amidst the political turbulence of the Cold War and the violent birth of new nations in the post-colonial era, he sought constantly to keep his inner life centred in God. He wrote in his diary in 1958:
 
So shall the world be created each morning anew, forgiven – in Thee, by Thee. (163)

I imagine him writing those words while preparing to face another day of international negotiations, and to me, after all the tragedy and violence of 2024, those words of hope hold healing power. But it was not a smooth path for Hammerskjold, and I am again touched as he mentions a few pages later his troubled sleep:
 
You wake from dreams of doom and – for a moment- you know: beyond all the noise and gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn. (166)

As you enter this new year of 2025, may you, like Hammerskjold, sense the freshness of God’s forgiveness creating “each morning anew”, and may you centre yourself in the solace of “the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame”.

Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee   
                                                                                            Photo by Hannah Tims on Unsplash

In The Way of Perfection, Teresa of Avila explains how contemplation can arise from verbal prayer. She mentions several repetitive prayers she has personally found helpful, especially the “Our Father”, or Lord’s Prayer. Over a number of chapters, she then elaborates on her understanding of that prayer, and I cannot help but hear in her writing the depth of her prayer life and the love she has for her Lord. She begins with the following words, 
 
“Our Father, which art in the heavens”. My Lord, how fittingly you reveal yourself as the Father of such a Son. How fittingly your Son reveals himself as the Son of such a Father. May you be blessed forever and ever. Shouldn't a favour as great as this one come at the end of the prayer? Here at the beginning, you fill our hands and grant us so great a favour that it would be a great blessing if our understanding would be filled, and our will be occupied. We would thus be unable to say another word. How appropriate perfect contemplation would be here. How right the soul would be to enter into itself, so it could rise above itself and so that this holy Son might show it the nature of the place where he says his Father dwells in the heavens.

Teresa goes on to speak of how wonderful it is that we are also children in this great family, and that the love between the family members is fully ours because of our inclusion through Jesus our Brother. May you this week have a sense of being a member of this wonderful, loving family, and may it lead your soul into joyful contemplation.

Brian Holliday
Anam Cara 
16 May 2023
                                                                                                                                               Photo by Download a pic Donate a buck! 

Catherine of Siena is an amazing woman. She had visions from an early age, refused to marry, and refused to become a nun. She had a profound influence on the politics of her day, and on the story of the Church. I have been reading Catherine’s Dialogue of Divine Providence and have found her sense of God’s presence and love quite captivating. Her cell, of course, was not in a monastery, but rather within herself. She speaks of it as her “cell of self-knowledge,” both knowledge of herself and knowledge of God, for, says Catherine, “knowledge must precede love.” That love comes from humble prayer that unites the soul to God, and Catherine describes it with these striking images and words,
 
And, since the soul seems, in such communion, sweetly to bind herself fast within herself and with God, and knows better His truth, inasmuch as the soul is then in God, and God in the soul, as the fish is in the sea, and the sea in the fish …
 
As I pray, I think of being in my cell of self-knowledge with its intimacy of knowing myself and God, and I imagine sinking into the ocean of God’s loving presence which surrounds me and sweetly binds me fast to God. As you journey with God this week, may you also have a sense of your inner cell of self-knowledge, and of the ocean of God’s love which surrounds you and sweetly binds you fast to God.
 
Brian Holliday
Anam Cara 
2 May 2023
                                                                                                                                  Photo by Sebastian Arie Voortman on Pexels

The sense of perfection which came through Edith Stein’s writing was one of the things I found difficult in reading her work. I decided to try and understand what she meant by going back to the founder of her order, Teresa of Avila. Teresa’s book, The Way of Perfection, was written for her community of nuns as a guide for their life together. Like Edith Stein’s work, it has some wonderful passages, but also some which seem to have a hard, demanding edge. I read on, then came to Chapter 8 where Terresa says,
 
I confess that … I am not as perfect as I should like to be. I must say the same about all the virtues and about all I am dealing with here, for it is easier to write about such things than to practice them.
 
Such a confession, I realized, was all I was looking for, as it opened up a sense togetherness as vulnerable, fallible humans on a journey to deeply love and engage with the Unseen One. There is so much I admire about the dedication and wholehearted commitment of these women, but it is the echo of the sinner’s prayer, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner,” which allows me to connect more deeply with them. May you, this week, have a sense of togetherness and encouragement with all vulnerable and fallible humans who seek to love and engage with the Unseen One.
 
Brian Holliday
Anam Cara 
18 April 2023
                                                                                                                                                                             Photo by Donald Tong

It has been surprising to me that I have found reading the spiritual writing of Edith Stein quite difficult. They haven’t moved me the way other spiritual writings have moved me. I have pondered on why that might be. Some of it is religious language and cultural difference, and yet it is more than that, for the people who knew Edith Stein were deeply moved by her writings, her intellect, and her love. But if there is one thing I take from her it is the sense of connection between the mystery of suffering and the mystery of love. Edith wrote about this in a poem, “I Will Remain with You…,” not long before she died in Auschwitz in 1942. Speaking of the mystery of both the suffering of Jesus and her love and bond with Jesus she wrote,
 
How wonderful are your gracious wonders!
All we can do is be amazed and stammer and fall silent
Because intellect and words fail.
 
These mysteries come into focus for us in Holy Week and Easter, the mystery of Christ’s suffering, and the mystery of his love for us and for all our suffering world. In the presence of such mysteries all we can do is fall into silence and wonder. May you, this Easter, find such moments of silence and wonder at the mystery of Christ’s suffering, and the mystery of his deep love for us and for all our suffering world.
 
Brian Holliday
Anam Cara 
​4 April 2023