Posted on in Sermons

3rd Sunday of Advent

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

The Book of the Prophet Zephaniah was written in the early part of the reign of King Josiah, between 635 and 625 BC. The name Zephaniah means “the Lord has hidden” or “defended by God” and it is thought he was related to an earlier king of Judah, Hezekiah. Most of the three chapters that make up this short book of the Bible are devoted to God’s judgement of human wickedness, but the compilers of the lectionary have taken pity and provided the short passage at the end of the book, which deals with final blessings, in which a remnant of the people of Israel remains humble and is saved.

So it is a book of warning: refrain from your wilful sinning, or else! In this sense, Zephaniah has a lot in common with the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, who also warned the social elite to refrain from their wickedness and hypocrisy. Both prophets were voices in the wilderness, calling for social justice and pure minds, a plea that was just as ignored then as it is today.

In Zephaniah’s time, the cult of other deities – false gods, idols – has developed in Jerusalem. He warns of God’s impending wrath, which will come with the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonian army fifty years later, in 586. This led to the Babylonian captivity, when large numbers of Judeans were forcibly relocated to Babylonia. This exile is later referenced in Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion”, memorably turned into a song by Boney M.

So the warning goes unheeded. The Book of Zephaniah is often regarded as a reversal of the creation story in Genesis, chapter 1. After the wonderful creation of God’s world, order is now to give way to disorder and destruction. This reminds me of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted. Entropy, the gradual decline into disorder, is inevitable.

I have observed this. After you start something new, there seems to be a period of grace, a honeymoon period, when everything goes swimmingly and the earth appears to be a paradise. But then little by little things start to go wrong, difficulties arise that need fixing, a noisy neighbour moves in upstairs, the car breaks down, someone falls sick. Sometimes the obstacles to a peaceful existence pile up and they can appear insurmountable. Life on earth may not seem so desirable, as the aches and pains increase. But this is clearly a stage of human existence and, as such, we must understand it.

Clearly we are meant to be tested. The people of Zephaniah’s time must have felt that order as they knew it was falling apart all around them, as idol worshippers proliferated, forming a tide that King Josiah was unable to hold back. They are not the only ones. Those who trod the path to Babylon, condemned to exile, must have felt that God had abandoned them, just as the monks of Lindisfarne in 793 AD must have been dismayed when the Viking raiders arrived in their ships to pillage and plunder and a reduced group of the faithful – the remnant of Israel – plodded around the kingdom of Northumbria with their precious cargo, the incorrupt body of St Cuthbert, until founding the city of Durham and building a church to house the relics more than two hundred years later. Exiles are not short.

And clearly we are not meant to view life on earth as our final destination. We will be forced to move on. The Durham-born author Benjamin Myers has a wonderful book called Cuddy, in which he puts himself in the minds of that retinue of faithful followers who accompanied Cuthbert’s body on its exile from Lindisfarne. He describes this pilgrimage, this forced march, as follows:

Walking and thinking

         praying and fasting;

         the endless act of

         facing yourself.[1]

So perhaps this is a time for home truths, for facing up to ourselves and stretching our limits, the limits of what we believe to be possible.

We seek heaven on earth. We are uncomfortable with the idea of discomfort. There is a wonderful collection of stories on the Church of England’s website at the moment, “Women of the Nativity” (cofe.io/WomenNativity), which focuses on the experiences of women such as Sarah, Abraham’s wife, and Mary. In the first story, Sarah grumbles and complains when she is forced to up sticks and leave her comfortable home in Ur, next to the Euphrates. In her experience, the Lord appearing to Abraham means nothing but disruption and dashed hopes. She talks about this God who keeps messing with her life. When Abraham’s younger brother dies, his father, Terah, announces that they are leaving. They trail across the desert for months and come to a place called Haran. When Terah himself dies, they continue to Canaan. Sarah talks about her laughter, which used to be spontaneous, but the older she gets, the more jaded it becomes. This is in stark contrast to the unfulfilled prophecies of Zephaniah – “Sing… shout aloud… Be glad and rejoice with all your heart” – a message that is repeated in Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

How many of us do this? How many of us “shout aloud and sing for joy”, as it says in the Canticle from Isaiah? Very few. That is because we are in exile, we haven’t arrived yet.

And now we come to the nub of the matter. As Sarah bemoans her fate, Abraham turns to her (in the imagined version by Paula Gooder) and tells her to “have patience”, to “have faith”. We are in the season of Advent. This also is a time of anticipation, of looking forward to events that have yet to happen. In this sense, perhaps the meaning of Advent is the closest to that of the lives we lead. The singing and rejoicing that they all seem to talk about haven’t happened yet. We are still on the way.

So we have a stark choice, like a path that forks before us. We can choose trust or we can succumb to its opposite, fear. I suspect most people’s faith is a combination of these two things. We would not be human if we didn’t feel a certain trepidation, especially when events seem to be spinning out of control. Where is this rejoicing, this singing for joy?

John the Baptist provides part of the answer. In today’s passage from Luke, he places great emphasis on bearing fruit and I have noticed that even in harsh circumstances, when the sun is beating down or the tent has a hole in it, it is still possible to bear fruit – if we put our mind to it. We need to do this, as well as avoiding the excesses John warns the tax collectors and Roman soldiers about.

When we put our trust in the Lord, we are tested, certainly. Every pilgrimage has its blisters. But can we see through the whirling storm to the calmness within? That is the question we must ask ourselves. What is our faith worth?

What touches me most about Zephaniah’s final epiphany is the way it will not just be us who are rejoicing, but God as well. “He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” God will also be singing. We all long for that look of unconditional love, the love of a parent, of a father in the home. We don’t want to be a wandering people forever. But God’s word is true. Sarah conceived Isaac. Abraham became the father of a great nation. Mary gave birth to the Saviour while remaining a virgin. All the women in these stories – Sarah, Huldah, Abigail, Elizabeth… – show one quality in common: patience. They have often waited twenty or thirty years for the outcome they wished for to disentangle itself.

It is patience that makes what appears impossible to become possible in time.

Let us pray:

Almighty God,

purify our hearts and minds,

that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again as

judge and saviour

we may be ready to receive him,

who is our Lord and our God.

Amen.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

[1] Benjamin Myers, Cuddy (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024), p. 111.

Posted on in Reviews

Review of “Songs of a Lost World” by The Cure

“Songs of a Lost World” is The Cure’s fourteenth studio album and was released on 1 November 2024. It has created a lot of expectation among diehard Cure fans, such as myself, because it comes sixteen years after their last studio album (“4:13 Dream”, 2008). But I think it’s more than that. Who among Cure fans of the eighties remembers an album called “4:13 Dream”? I certainly don’t. For me, there’s the first four albums – “Three Imaginary Boys” (1979), “Seventeen Seconds” (1980, with the epic “Forest” intro, though I was always very partial to “M”), “Faith” (1981, my God, that album got me into Oxford, no, not the album, the 12” version of “Faith” with “Charlotte Sometimes” on the other side, listening out of my bedroom window before going to bed), “Pornography (1982, somehow I feel this should have been their earliest album) – plus “Disintegration” (1989). I left off listening to The Cure after “Disintegration”. Was it that awful album “Wish”, or just the fact my life took another direction, I went abroad and had other things to think about? “Songs of a Lost World” has reunited us all with our past.

And it was an epic past. Robert accompanied us through adolescence and into adulthood. He formed us, somehow. Most of my university friends will remember me for liking The Cure. That was a defining characteristic, something that set me apart. It may even have taken me off the rails. I underperformed at university, and I think that is due, in part at least (add in the fact that no other decade has surpassed the eighties in terms of quality music), to my obsession with The Cure.

Now, “Songs of a Lost World” makes all of that (and believe me, there has been some soul searching along the way) worthwhile. Robert gifts us a look into our past, just as with the epic “Endsong” he himself looks into his past, standing outside in the garden with his father at the time of the Moon landing in 1969 and wondering if there could really be people up on this white, blood-red orb.

What sets Robert apart as a musician is that he doesn’t mince his words. He doesn’t claim that there is some small light at the end of the tunnel most of us find ourselves in. There is simply “nothing”. That old world, the world we felt comfortable in, the world of the eighties, has disappeared and, much as we might wish it would return, it won’t. We are faced with economic instability, environmental degradation, and not enough time for anything really. It’s like time, which used to be so generous, suddenly became stingy. We are rationed. We grab some release here or there, but soon it’s back to the grindstone, trying to keep up, without the possibility of taking a step back and considering where our lives are headed because they seem to just be going round and round in circles. We are donkeys chasing our tails in a pathetic attempt to pay the bills.

Robert gives us time. He makes that time available. He hasn’t changed. Even if he says he is “left alone with nothing at the end of every song”, he carries on writing them. He can’t stop himself. The creative urge is irresistible. We know we’re not going to succeed – life, that hungry animal, is going to get us in the end. But we continue regardless. Because what other choice do we have? We can’t just down tools, go on strike. We have responsibilities.

There is a moment in this album that makes the last thirty-five years of waiting worthwhile. It is the instrumental bridge in the middle of “Endsong” (7:59 mins). I think at this point Robert and his fellow travellers – Simon, Jason, Roger, Reeves – grasp something of eternity. Damn, they take hold of it by the tail and fly off into the night sky, laughing inanely as the sparks scatter all around them. So, for all the times we have been fucked, all the times we have been treated badly, all the times life has let us down and there hasn’t been an answer, we have our moment of vindication, our moment of glorious, exploding hope.

Yes, tomorrow it will be back to the grindstone, to all the bureaucracy and demands that humans impose on each other because they can’t think of anything better to do. But now, even though we know the whole system is flawed, a human construct based on the desire to possess, we have our secret weapon. We have seen.

And this is what Robert gives us – vision. One of my favourite tracks on the album is “Warsong”. Honestly, it reminds of my late wife’s family. “All we will ever know is bitter ends for we are born to war.” This message could be taken to be pessimistic. Much of the album could be understood in this vein. It doesn’t seem to hold out much hope – of a better world, of kinder relationships (which is all we really hanker after), of a better understanding of our environment, the nature that gives us life and should be at the top of any political programme. This is why older people become so attached to animals. They see the goodness in them, the lack of deceit.

And yet it gives hope. It gives strength. And this is what Cure fans are so grateful for. Thank you. That rocket-speed launch into eternity is all I need. To know that it exists. What every human being is waiting for, and not getting, is a just world order (and perhaps not to have to die). This is the basis of all world religion – that we can be better than this, that we can act with kindness, that someone out there cares about us. Life is a journey towards the realization that greed, self-interest, the desire to possess, needs to be reined in. What life is there without forgiveness? Without mercy?

“Left alone with nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” This is how the album ends. Yes, but it’s not “nothing”, is it? It’s something better than this.

Review by Jonathan Dunne, http://www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Language

Rafael Dieste, “From the Imp’s Archives”

I started translating Galician literature in 1993, three years after graduating from Oxford in Classics. I have since translated 69 Galician books by a total of 33 writers, as well as three anthologies. But I had three masters. The first was Rosalía de Castro, the first author I translated professionally (meaning I was paid). I was asked by the Secretariat for Language Policy in 1993 to translate the opening section of her book New Leaves, “Vaguedás”. I was then hired by the Ramón Piñeiro Centre to translate both her major works of Galician poetry, Galician Songs and New Leaves, between 1994 and 1996, which I did, continuing (unpaid) until 1997. When friends in Lugo used to ask where I was, the answer would often be, “Ah, he’s with Rosalía.” This translation is where I cut my teeth. It was never published, but it did enable me to be the editor of Canadian writer Erín Moure’s translation of the same two books for my publishing house, Small Stations Press, in 2013 and 2016. I am still influenced by Rosalía’s metres in my writing today.

My second master was Rafael Dieste. I felt a strong affinity to this writer, his elegant style and cavernous asides. His book of short stories From the Imp’s Archives is the only book I have translated more than once. In fact I have translated it four times. I played the role of the author in a production put on by my friend and teacher Camilo F. Valdehorras with the theatre group AUGATEBA in Barcelona in 1995. I entered the auditorium in Barcelona University dressed as an English gentleman, with a newspaper under my arm, reciting (in Galician) the story “The Light in Silence”. I still remember the silence that hung in the air when I finished. We even recorded “The Knight’s Drama” for radio – I played the role of the White Knight, a dreamer.

My third master was Manuel Rivas. The translation of his novel The Carpenter’s Pencil was my first contract with a publishing house in London, The Harvill Press (I received a letter in the post asking me to translate it from the unfailingly polite editor, Euan Cameron). I would go on to translate nine titles by Manuel Rivas, six for The Harvill Press (which became Harvill Secker and then Penguin Random House). These included six novels, two collections of short stories and one book of poetry. The one that required the greatest stamina was Books Burn Badly. I had to maintain the tension, to live with the book, for ten months. This is why I always say it’s harder translating fiction than poetry, because you have to keep the tension going for that much longer (a poem is normally over in a matter of pages; the English-language edition of Books Burn Badly is 560 pages). I have a soft spot for The Potato Eaters, but the one I would take to a desert island is the last I translated, The Low Voices, an autobiographical novel that is incredibly moving.

These are my three masters, the ones I learnt most from. Well, now my (fourth) translation of eight of the twenty stories in From the Imp’s Archives has seen the light for the first time as part of the project “Seara”, housed and funded by the Consello da Cultura Galega, described as “an open project for an international community of readers” and aimed, like my publishing house, at making Galician literature more widely available. This project is the brainchild of that great lover of all things Galician Kathleen March.

It is amazing how often I catch myself hearing echoes of Dieste’s stories in everyday speech or in my thoughts. A turn of phrase, a strange situation, a jolt that brings you back to reality or transports you far away… These are eight of my favourite stories by one of my top five writers. The stories are magical, funny, and they do not fade with time.

The eight stories can be read here in both Galician and English. A complete edition of the book, with the definitive 1973 Galician text and my English translation, accompanied by illustrations from both the 1962 and the 1973 editions (by Xohán Ledo and Luis Seoane), is now available from Small Stations Press.

Posted on in Sermons

14th Sunday after Trinity

Readings: Song of Solomon 2.8-13; Psalm 45.1-2, 6-9; James 1.17-27;Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“Lattice” is a funny word. It sounds like “lettuce”. It is fitted to a window to stop people breaking and entering, but to let the wind pass. It is there to stop people seeing too much. A lattice is what is used by the women of the house in Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, so that they can see without being seen, observe what is happening in the street without being observed themselves.

And yet in today’s passage from the Song of Solomon it is God, the beloved, who “stands behind our wall, gazes through the windows, peers through the lattice”. Isn’t a lattice precisely what we use to be seen by God – that is, we allow him a qualified view, the best parts of ourselves, the ones we’re prepared to share? We are much more reluctant to let him see us all, to let him see us in our nakedness, as a lover would, warts and all.

We compartmentalize and are happy to show him the good stuff – the house we have constructed, the nicely pruned roses, the smartly trimmed lawn. We are even happier if our neighbours make complimentary remarks and this enhances our reputation. A wonderful neighbour, a worthy neighbour, a reputable neighbour. We might even have dropped a few coins in the tray of the beggar on the corner of our street.

Yes, but what about some of the darker stuff that is hidden behind the latticework which allows only a partial view (the way we would like to be seen)? James, in his letter, describes it as “all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent”. Mark’s list, unfortunately, is longer: “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly”. Mark describes these as evil thoughts that come from within, and he warns us that it is they that defile a person. Note that it is thoughts he cites, not words or actions.

I am in the habit of taking my dog for a walk two or three times a day. That is, he goes for three walks – I do two of them, three if my son is away. Most of the streets and parks around where we live I have become overly familiar with, and as Simi potters along, sniffing and pulling in certain directions, there is a limit to how much I can observe the scene and I fall to thinking. How many of my thoughts are “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly”? Well, it depends what kind of day I’ve had. And what do we do about these thoughts that, if we are not careful, can lead to words and actions?

The first point to make is that we all have them. No human mind is as pure as the ivory that adorns kings’ palaces or as gleaming as gold from Ophir, a place from which gold was imported to the Middle East and which is said to have existed, though its location is uncertain.

I would say that the first way to counter thoughts that might lead to immoral behaviour or acts of revenge is to accept that they exist and then to ignore them.

Another way is to speak them aloud to a confessor. I am sorry that the sacrament of confession is so little used because I think it can be very helpful in the process of cleansing our souls. Perhaps we associate it too much with feeling guilty, with penance and punishment, but it needn’t be like this, if, as I said before, we accept that evil thoughts are common to us all and it is done in a spirit of communal love and non-judgementalism.

We can pray to God, cry out to the Lord for help, but in the heat of the moment, when lust or anger or hatred blinds our vision, this might not bring us the calm we seek.

We can surround ourselves with other believers. As it says in Psalm 133, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” We can look for a change of scene, avoid people or places that trigger temptation.

We can be grateful. It is very difficult to have evil thoughts when you are grateful. Thankfulness and hatred do not go hand in hand. We can respond with gentleness, adopt an attitude of lowliness in the light of Christ’s sacrifice and rejoice in the things that he has done.

It says in Proverbs, “The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but he loves the one who pursues righteousness.” We find the same message in today’s readings. In Psalm 45, “You love righteousness and hate wickedness.” In James, “human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” This letter is traditionally attributed not to James the Apostle, the brother of John and son of Zebedee, but to James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who became leader of the Church in Jerusalem. James goes on to tell us that vanity is not the answer – looking at ourselves in the mirror – but piety, “looking intently into the perfect law that gives freedom”.

“Looking intently into the perfect law that gives freedom.” That is, a righteous way of life will free us from our passions. We think of freedom as getting what we want, as indulging the ego, but this will lead to frustration, isolation and a lack of bearing fruit. It is when we glimpse something greater than our own needs – which will be met anyway – that we can lay down the hatchet and begin to find peace.

So, we embrace righteousness. We make a conscious choice. We say to ourselves that this is the life that I choose in order to become the best version of myself, the best that I can be. True freedom is submission. The last will be first, and the first will be last. We must lose our life in order to find it. Christianity is full of paradox, which I take to be an indicator of truth.

That latticework is what hides our innermost thoughts. We try to prevent God from entering, or at least from seeing too much. It is as if a guest arrives unannounced and we rush around stuffing dirty clothes under the bed, dirty plates in the oven. We don’t have to do this. We can let him in. And when we do this, we will see that:

The winter is past;

the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

is heard in our land.

I would like to stress that this is a conscious choice “to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”. Of course, it’s not always possible. I normally find that my good intentions are thwarted after five minutes. But I also have the impression that if we declare this intention, God, who knows our weaknesses, will keep us from falling – if he sees a commitment on our part, a willingness to steer our lives in the right direction.

Let us pray:

God of constant mercy,

who sent your Son to save us:

remind us of your goodness,

increase your grace within us,

that our thankfulness may grow,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Heart of Language

15. Atom

Christ became human so that he might translate for us the meaning of life through parables (Braille, writing for the spiritually blind), but also so that he might translate us when we die. The process of translation, when a word in one language disappears in the translator’s mind in order to reappear in another language, can be likened to death, when someone disappears and is spoken into the language of eternity.

Christ became man in order to show us the road to salvation. He entered his own creation through one of his creatures, Mary. He came to translate for us the meaning of life, because we were at a loss and it needed explaining. He did this by means of parables. We have seen examples. Parable is connected to Braille through the phonetic pair b-p – it is writing for the spiritually blind, for those whose spiritual eyes have not been opened.

But I believe that there is another reason for God to become human, to enter his creation. God is the Author, the source of all that is. We are not the Author, much as we would like to be, because we cannot create out of nothing. We need what already exists, and our purpose is to take this and to turn it into something better, to translate it, just as the translator of a text takes a text written in one language and converts it into another through an unseen, and highly spiritual, process that takes place in the person’s mind as they are translating.

When we are translating a text, there is a point, once we have understood the original (read it, looked up any words we do not know, consulted with the writer or an expert in their work, all the horizontal work of preparation), when the original disappears, it evaporates, the words dissipate, the letters fade away, and out of the translator’s mind, through their fingers as they type on the keyboard, appear new words, words written in another language.

That momentary disappearance, that disembodiment, can be likened to the process of human death. We also seem to disappear, our bodies are put in the ground, and we are no longer seen. We also evanesce, cease to be discernible by the five senses. But in whose mind are we?

I think that Christ became man not only to translate for us the meaning of life by means of parables and his example, but also literally so that he could translate us at our death. An author is the source. A translator acts as a conduit, just as the Virgin Mary did when she acquiesced to bear Jesus in her womb. By becoming human, Christ became the Translator.

We are a text being written. Everything we do in this life takes us in a certain direction. And when we reach the end of our lives, we will be spoken, having been taken up into the mind of the Translator. We will be freed of the constraints of time, and we will enter eternity, the white page on which words are written.

This is why eternal gives two connections. For the first, we must take a step in the alphabet, e-f, and use two pairs of letters that look alike, i-l and n-h (one is an extension of the other). In this way, eternal gives father and I:

eternal = father + I

I think this is because, once we have been spoken, we will have left the speaker’s mouth and be able to see him.

It also spells I am free (phonetic pair m-n, pairs of letters that look alike, i-l and f-t):

eternal = I am free

We will be free of corruption, of the bondage to sin, free to express ourselves without fear (free – the fine line between fear of God and the fire of purification, if we allow fluidity to the vowels; the good news is that it lasts for ever, f-v).

Language contains hidden meaning. The whole of human existence is contained within it. We haven’t realized this. We treat language like an external object, a tool. We use words to bash people on the heads and also to caress them. But we haven’t realized that we ourselves are language, words in the making, spoken into being – breath, water and flesh; h, vowels and consonants – just as we read in the first two chapters of Genesis.

Language tells us the road that we must follow. Christ is very clear about this when he says to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24). This is the way to eternal life, but it passes through denying the ego, drawing a line through the I, which forms a cross, †, but also a plus-sign, + (the meaning of losing our life in order to find it).

We have seen the three ways of moving away from the line by forming a triangle, the letter A, by deleting the I, +, and by treating the line as a number and counting down to O: A+O. These three symbols spell the name of God Alpha and Omega. As soon as we turn our backs on the ego, we turn to God. They are also found in the middle conjunction, and, if we write it with capital letters: AND (A ’N’ O). The reverse of and is DNA – it is in our DNA to do this, to move away from the line, to follow the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIO or AIW.

And when we draw a line through the ego, when we make the sign of the cross (a cross is a deleted I), something extraordinary happens. The progression of the Greek alphabet, with the ego deleted, spells A+O/W (depending on which letter we use to depict omega, a long o or w).

We effect a change at molecular level – the “living water” Christ was talking about, a change of heart, literally, at a level we cannot normally see – because this progression is contained in the word atom, traditionally the smallest particle of matter.

There is a clear connection between language and the environment: seed-root-tree-fruit. A tree that branches out is like a flowering ego, it is no longer a straight line. There is a clear connection between language and the history of the world, from the creation in the Book of Genesis to the Last Judgement, when angels will come to glean the field. And just as we plant a seed outside (as the Samaritan woman fetches water from the well in a bucket), so we must hear the Word of God and plant a seed in our heart.

The one will feed our stomach. The other will give us wings, and change our perception for ever.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 15/15

Back to: Contents

See also: Theological English (video course); Word in Language (series of articles)

Posted on in Poetry

Presopta Place

I am not in a hurry

I am not going anywhere

I am being

as the Celts would say

The rocks smile at me

as they have done

for some time now

I cannot be sure

they are where I left them

They might have moved

an inch or two

a couple of miles

reassembled at first light

when shapes take form

struck a pose

usually smiling

They are old parchments

containing a language we do not speak

we haven’t bothered to learn

of light and shade

cracks and splodges

The universe is language being formed

We ourselves are words in the making

waiting to be pronounced

our definition fixed for the dictionary

what we will be

breath water and flesh

the sound of creation

a hum

lips crashing together

like waves mid-ocean

or mountain goats

as matter

­– flesh, the consonants –

comes into being

the oceans and rivers are vowels

and air God’s breath

the letter h

the beginning of language

We are waiting to be expelled

from this cavernous mouth

that is space

spoken

Black holes are nothing more than throats

and stars are light-bearing larvae

grubs clinging to the palate

As God opens his mouth

(he hasn’t spoken yet

– speech is the general resurrection

the waves that never meet

finally landing on the shore)

space expands

winds rage across the cosmos

carrying particles

– up and off

at and into –

smoke

I am a word

perhaps to form part of a sentence

with you

together we will give meaning

or diverge

like paths in the forest

– Golden Bridges, White Birches –

only to meet

further down the page

or in another chapter

I am breath (h)

vowels (saliva)

flesh (substance)

I am lost

in the Magic Forest

sun-dappled and quiet

waiting to be remembered

Memory is not something that has happened

It is something waiting to happen

the only way

we can be translated

into another reality

is to leave behind

the form we have taken

to all intents and purposes

to disappear

to cover the Translator’s hiatus

until he remembers us

and names us

(a template no longer)

The two conditions for translation

are faith and memory

to leave behind our form

to cease to exist

so we can be expressed

once more

A word dies and is reborn

In that transition

the Translator’s memory

(our speck of faith)

is all.

Jonathan Dunne

Presopta Place (Mount Vitosha), August 2024

Posted on in Heart of Language

14. Mary

The Virgin Mary is often referred to as the New Eve because of her role in the economy of salvation. We learn in Genesis that Adam called his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all who live”, since in Hebrew the name Eve resembles the word for “living”; if we apply the phonetic pair l-r, we will see that there is a connection between “living” and “Virgin”, which confirms the link between them.

I have the utmost veneration for Mary, the Mother of God. There is no one else through whom I would rather be saved. As part of God’s creation, she also responds to language in the most extraordinary way.

The rules that I have expounded in these short texts for unearthing spiritual meaning are very simple. We may rearrange the letters. We may change the vowels, which are water, by allowing them to flow (a-e, earth-three). We may replace the vowel i with its semi-vowel equivalent, y (think of try and tried). When we get to the flesh of language, the consonants, we must be familiar with the seven simple pairs, pairs of consonants such as f-v and l-r that are pronounced in the same part of the mouth (often one is voiced, the other is voiceless). We may replace the redundant letter c with either of the ways it is pronounced, k and s (think of a word like Pacific).We may take a step in the alphabet (d-e, God-ego; f-g, father-gather), turn a letter upside down (m-w, I am-way) or back to front (b-d, birth-third), or lengthen it (v-y, Eve-eye). And this is the way we will enter the spiritual edifice of the language we speak.

Look at Mary. Replace the y with i, and tell me what you can see.

Mary contains the name that God reveals to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, I AM, in reverse, with the addition of the letter r. So it is clear that she has the divine in her.

And what if we double the r? We get marry. For her to give birth to the Son of God, was it not necessary for there to be a marriage of wills, as well as the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit that made the incarnation possible?

I AM-Mary-marry

She is the Mother of God. If we treat letters like reels in a slot machine and press the button, allowing the letters to spin according to their order in the alphabet, we will see that mother spells her son (m-n, s-t). The archetypal Mother, the Mother of us all, gave birth to her son in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

mother-her son

Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the long-awaited one, the one who would come to free us from bondage, except that he didn’t do this with physical weapons (remember the well and the bucket). The change he effects takes place within us, but it is no less visible for that. It’s just that if you’re expecting fireworks, flashing lights and earth tremors, you might not get them. Or you will, but not in the way you expect, and over a longer period.

Messiah. Can the word tell us anything? Does the word Messiah not contain I AM and she? Is this not confirmation of Mary’s role in the incarnation?

Messiah = I AM + she

We refer to her as “maid” and “lady”, two words that clearly contain the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIO (AIW).

But she is best known as the Virgin Mary.

Do you remember what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John, chapter 4, about asking him and receiving “living water” – not visible water that can only be retrieved by means of a physical bucket, but water that will flow “out of the believer’s heart” (Jn 7:38), becoming “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”? This “living water” is not one that satisfies our physical needs momentarily, it restores us to ourselves, reminding us that we are eternal beings in physical bodies. If we believe – and when did anyone achieve anything without believing in what they were doing? – we will inherit eternal life. The word we have been in this earthly life, the sum of our acts and intentions, will be spoken.

Living water. Virgin Mary (l-r). The two words are connected, and this is because the Virgin Mary is the second Eve. Being a virgin and giving birth is what sets her apart from God’s other creatures; virgin harks back to the name of Eve in Genesis 3:20, “because she was the mother of all who live”, resembling as it does the Hebrew word for living.

Language, it seems, is also Marian.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 14/15

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Posted on in Heart of Language

13. O WN

Language is thought made manifest. We are words in a dictionary, responsible for and dependent on others. Christ entered his creation, came through the eye of the needle, in order that we might have the courage and confidence to go in the other direction.

We have now seen a correlation between Christ and the environment we live in, but this should not surprise us if we accept that Christ is the Word and the world was spoken into being.

Christ is the Word. It says in the Christian Creed that all things were made by him, they were spoken into being. So physical matter would seem to be the result of language.

When we speak, we make things manifest in a similar way – our thoughts, our observations, our wishes. So we also turn something that did not exist into physical matter. We are using fragments of the Word to do this, as if the Word had been divided among us (like pieces of bread, or shards of a mirror). But the idea is the same – we make things manifest by using language.

So I would say that we speak Christ. Since there is a striking connection between the words son and sun (they are homophones, they sound the same), I would suggest that we see by him. After all, in John 8:12, he calls himself “the light of the world”. Perhaps this can be understood literally (just as the story of creation in the Book of Genesis is literally a description of speech, or the concept of the Trinity is literally three in ONE).

We speak him, we see by him. We also breathe him if we accept that Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity, O2, the chemical formula for oxygen. When we combine this symbol in reverse with the letter for breath, h, to refer to the Holy Spirit, we get H2O, the chemical formula for water. So we also drink him.

It would seem that our life is completely dependent on Christ, whether or not we believe in him. Enter an Orthodox church and you will most likely see an icon of Christ Pantocrator (“Ruler of All”). In this image, Christ is shown with the beams of the Cross behind him (only three are visible), and in these beams are written the letters O WN.

O WN is Greek for “the being”, which is the translation of the name that God reveals to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14: I AM. Again, we find here confirmation of the Trinity, because O WN is almost identical to ONE, it’s just that one of the letters has been rotated.

O WN also spells three words in English: own, won and now. Christ claims us as his own; the victory is his, he has won; he is here with us now (the meaning of the name Emmanuel).

I have seen this name written O WH. In Cyrillic, the letter H is pronounced N, and indeed the two letters are very similar (only the crossbar has become slanted). There is also a rough breathing in the original Greek, ὁ ὤν, the reverse apostrophe, which equates to the letter h in English.

If we write the name in this way, then we will see that it spells the words who and how, the result of making the progression AIO from what (A, the letter of creation: “What is this creature?”, “What shall I call it?”) through why (I, the letter of the Fall, an expression of distrust, of disobedience: “Why should I do this?”, “Why should I believe you?”).

Who and how are the questions that we should be asking. What is factual. Why is self-centred. We think that the purpose of life is to amass things and then to share them out, because we were taught at school to count up from 1, to do sums, multiplications and divisions. But actually the answer we are seeking is a person.

Christ gives us the answer to both question words when he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). I am and way are connected if we turn the m upside down and replace the vowel i with its semi-vowel equivalent, y. Both words contain the progression AIW (omega written as w).

We have also seen how when we flee the ego, the I, when we refuse to heed its selfish demands, we automatically create three symbols: A+O, the name of God Alpha and Omega. This can be written A ’N’ O and is found in the conjunction and, the reverse of which is DNA (it is in our DNA to do this). If we write this same progression with the Greek letter for omega, w, we get ANW, which with the w turned upside down gives man. So this denial of the ego, of our innate selfishness, is in the word that describes us (and woman is the same, only it has O3 at the beginning).

The automatic result of turning away from the ego, I, is to say the name of God Alpha and Omega: A+O. By turning away from the ego, we call on him. This is why God and ego are only a step apart in the alphabet (d-e). And him is just I’m with a little breath (h) before it.

This is what makes us human, a combination of hu (Sanskrit for “invoke the gods” and the root of our word “God”) and man – physical beings with the divine spark in them, the potential to become gods by grace if we attend to our true nature, which is not to grab whatever we see out there and to claim it as our own, making a mockery of the divine in us, but to see ourselves as part of the whole, a word in the dictionary, responsible for and dependent on the other. This most ancient way of calling on God – hu – sounds exactly the same as who, the letters we find in Christ’s icon, emphasizing what it is we should be asking.

In the Old Testament, there are two other names of God, apart from I AM. They are YHWH, the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (Yahweh), and El.

YHWH is extremely close to the question word why. So, if we make the progression from I to O, as we did with live-love, sin-son and Christ-cross, opening the line (opening our spiritual Is) to form not a barrier, a wall, but a tunnel that we can walk through, like the proverbial camel through the eye of the needle, just as why gives who, so the name of God in the Old Testament, YHWH, gives O WH, the letters found in Christ’s icon.

And if we place the other name of God from the Old Testament, El, in front of O WH, the two names together spell WHOLE in reverse (keeping the digraph wh together, as we did with earth-three).

This combination YHWH-O WH (why-who) and El-O WH (whole) goes a long way to confirming Christ as the fulfilment of the Old Testament law and prophets. This is why I would say that language is not only Trinitarian (three in ONE), but also Christological.

All physical appearances of God in the Old Testament are said to be by the Logos – that is, Christ – but we are not allowed to touch him. In the New Testament, when he walks among his disciples, eats with them and washes their feet, God himself has entered his creation. He has slipped through the hole – I become O – but in the other direction, so that we will have the courage and confidence to go the other way. This is an extraordinary act of condescension, of coming down to our level, and it was only possible because one of his creatures – namely Mary – acted as a conduit. How else in bodily form do you enter the creation that you have made, if not through one of your creatures?

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 13/15

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Posted on in Vitosha

Kladnitsa – Selimitsa – Ostritsa – Kladnitsa

Starting Coordinates: 42.5685, 23.19619

Distance: 8.2 km

Elevation Gain: 475 m

Time: 3¼ hours

Difficulty: moderate-hard

Transport: by car, or by minibus

  • The start of the ecopath, next to the road that leads from Kladnitsa to Kladnitsa Monastery and Selimitsa Hut.
  • At the start of the walk, the river has three crosses fixed in the stone.
  • Three successive bridges take you across the river.
  • Having crossed the river again, you reach a small clearing. Keep straight.
  • The path rejoins the road to Selimitsa Hut and continues up some steps on the other side.
  • Selimitsa Hut, which offers food.
  • The track enters the forest.
  • The picnic hut on the left.
  • One of the boulders that line the route.
  • The stone run.
  • The view of Studena Reservoir.
  • The path reaches the top. Ostritsa Hut is on the right.
  • Ostritsa Hut.
  • The descent back to where you started.
  • The depiction of the Trinity on the ceiling of the nave in Kladnitsa Monastery.

Kladnitsa, with a population of little more than a thousand, is the highest village on the west side of Vitosha. To get there by car, you must take the road from Sofia to Pernik, which passes through Knyazhevo and Vladaya before arriving at the crest of the hill and descending on the other side. As it reaches the bottom, in a village called Dragichevo, there is a set of traffic lights. Turn left here (it is signposted for Rudartsi, 4 km, and Kladnitsa, 9 km). If you continue straight, you will reach the motorway for Greece, the A3, and then Pernik.

In 1.5 kilometres, you enter Rudartsi. Stay on the same road. In another 4 kilometres, you enter Kladnitsa. 400 metres after entering Kladnitsa, the road veers left, signposted for Kladnitsa Monastery and Selimitsa Hut, and takes you uphill. After one kilometre, you leave the village of Kladnitsa and immediately enter Vitosha Nature Park. Keep going for another 500 metres. As the road turns left, you will see the start of the ecopath. 200 metres after the start of the ecopath is the slip road that leads to Kladnitsa Monastery. There is a very small area to park your car just after the start of the ecopath, otherwise people tend to park on the verge. It can be quite busy at weekends in summer.

There is a minibus that goes to Kladnitsa from the Russian Monument in Sofia once an hour, during the daytime. The 21 bus also goes there from Pernik. The buses stop in the main square in Kladnitsa, where the chitalishte (community centre) is. From here, you need to head eastwards, and soon the road will take you out of Kladnitsa and into Vitosha Nature Park.

The ecopath is known as the “path of health”. It leads straight up from the road. The river should be on your right. In 200 metres, you cross the river on three separate bridges and continue on the other side. In another 200 metres, you again cross the river, but this time the path leaves the river behind and soon reaches a clearing with a bench between two tree trunks. You continue straight here (signposted for Cherni Vrah and Selimitsa Hut). In 200 metres, a small bridge takes you over a stream, and you become aware of the road you were on up on your left. The path crosses the same stream again, and 1.1 kilometres after the start of the ecopath you rejoin the road at Selimitsa Hut. There is a car park further down on your left.

The path continues on the other side of the road, up some steps, and in a couple of minutes you arrive at Selimitsa Hut, which is a popular place for eating. If you don’t have food with you, you want to bear in mind that Ostritsa Hut is not working, so this is your only chance to grab a bite to eat on the route.

The path heads behind the hut (where the kitchens are) and joins a track. At the track, turn left and continue climbing past some wonderfully located houses. 300 metres after the hut, the track veers right and enters the forest. This track will now take you to Ostritsa Hut, the highest point on this walk.

I have marked the walk as “moderate-hard” not because of the distance, but because of the elevation gain (475 metres over 4.2 kilometres). You are constantly climbing. I always think it’s a question of not being anxious to arrive somewhere, but simply going at your own pace, putting one foot in front of the other. That’s all anyone does, isn’t it? And humans have achieved great things by putting one foot in front of the other and being patient.

Very soon on the left is a picnic hut, with a small fountain behind it (only trickling water). Fifteen minutes after the picnic hut, there is a stone run, one of those moraine rivers that are so characteristic of Vitosha (and of the Falklands, apparently). Another 200 metres, and there is a wonderful view to the south-west of Studena Reservoir. Another ten minutes, and there is another small fountain on the right, this one without any water. One more kilometre, and you reach the top, with Ostritsa Hut on your right. You are now not far from the walk that begins at Ofeliite.

Unfortunately, Ostritsa Hut doesn’t work, but I still ate my lunch, sitting by the hut and the grassy slope that leads to Ostritsa Peak. I then headed back down the way I had come. What makes this path so worthwhile is the beauty of the path itself, which is mostly shaded, the views to the south-west, and the numerous boulders that line the route. You are also on a less frequented part of the mountain.

Back at the bottom, do make time to visit Kladnitsa Monastery, dedicated to St Nicholas, which is only 200 metres further up the road and has a very distinctive depiction of the Trinity on the ceiling of the nave.