Mysterious Wisdom

An email reminder arrived this morning to pay next year's TV license fee. I did this later in the day It'll be the last full year to pay, as in 2020, unless the government changes the regulation, the license is free. I'll be over 75. Well, I think I will have to pay for the year, and then get nine months worth refunded. A bit odd really, and so strange to think I'll be that old.

Our Christmas tree was delivered this morning. It'll stay in the shed until next weekend, when the candles on our Advent wreath are nearly finished, and the family gathers for the feast. Then the crib will come out and the tree be decorated. Meanwhile, Clare hangs cards on ribbon along the dado rail our old house is still lucky enough to have, but that's all. We enjoy the contrast of domestic Advent simplicity, and don't at all mind the Christmas trimmings appearing in other people's front rooms, in church, and in the public realm. I may hate the long hours of darkness and overcast skies, but this season of waiting for the coming of the Light, together with Passiontide, rank as my favourite times of year.

I received details this morning of a funeral Fr Mark has asked me to do on St John's day. This week I'll be covering the weekday services at St Catherine's. Despite the periodic misery of my condition, I am still fit and well enough to continue leading worship and preaching. I do so with gratitude and joyous enthusiasm. Nobody wants to suffer but mysteriously it seems to sharpen the experience of just being alive. Friday last was the feast of St John of the Cross. The Breviary reading for the day is  taken from his own commentary on the 36th verse of his 'Spiritual Canticle'. It's quite suitable for this, the seventh day before Christmas, traditionally referred to as 'O Sapientia'

'Would that we might at last understand that it is impossible to attain to the thicket of manifold riches of the wisdom of God without entering into the thicket of manifold suffering, making that its consolation and desire! And how the soul which really longs for divine wisdom first longs for suffering, that it may enter more deeply into the thicket of the cross.' 

'Thicket' is an odd word at first glance, a wild dense place of biodiversity full of surprises and almost impenetrable even untameable, or at least only with great care. It expresses the idea of inexhaustible variety to be discovered - this is 'mystery', as understood on the opposite side of the Mediterranean.