Lord, lead me

-
O Lord, I pray that this year I will let you lead me by the belt and take me where I would rather not go. Help me to discern your path for me and to have the courage to follow it, step by step, even though I won't see in advance where it will lead me...

In the below photo (taken yesterday at Montreuil-sur-mer - what link with "Les Misérables"?), for example, are friends that I made thanks to a series of "chance" encounters on the Camino de Santiago in N. Spain in 2006.


A few years afterwards I discovered from Christian (next to me) and Marie-Brigitte (far right) that they'd had a son who died when he was 16. Like me, he was born in 1968. He died on Oct. 10th 1984. My birthday is Oct. 9th. Christian's surname is Frère. His name therefore means "Christian Brother". Factor in the laugh out loud coincidences that led to us meeting 6 times in the space of 7 days and we're left with an example of what I mean by the Lord leading me by the belt. By I had to first discern that a sponsored ride to Santiago was what he wanted me to do that year.

When Christian and Marie-Brigitte found out about my birthday, all they said - with a touching calmness - was "Now we know why we met you." The 2nd photo is one from that pilgrimage in 2006, when we had a meal together in Portomarin. The other couple are Jean-Marie and Danielle Coudron, former colleagues of the Frères who have also stayed good friends with me. I stayed the night with them on my sponsored cycle in 2015 from Berlin to the Normandy beaches.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God You don't need me, but somehow You want me - Tenth Avenue North, “Control”

-
Image
I sent the below message to my teaching colleagues in school this evening, braced as we are for the arrival of “those-who-shall-not-be-named” (i.e. OFSTED, national school inspectors) sometime between now and Easter. For those of you who live outside of Britain their job is to monitor and ensure high standards in all schools… the problem is that they keep moving the goalposts. Anyway, enough of that. Here’s what I said: I think that the attached video teaching is for us right now, to help us not lose sight of who we are and why we are here in a Catholic school. It's too late for the weekend just gone, but try to take on board its message of "wasting time for God" over the coming weeks, despite the pressures that we are all under. Even if you are not a believer yourself, give yourself some time alone with your thoughts, if you can… even just a few minutes.  The video teaching is by one of my favourite bands, Tenth Avenue North, and it accompanies a song of ...
Read more

District 9 - a sci-fi anti-apartheid allegory and the first handheld camera masterpiece?

-
Image
Following on from yesterday's post, here's an interesting article from The Guardian film blog . District 9: Where aliens come to Earth and handheld comes of age District 9, the shock blockbuster produced by Peter Jackson, isn't just notable for its box office dominance and viral marketing campaign. It's also the closest thing to a handheld masterpiece that's yet been made Handheld on handholding … A still from District 9 Lars, time to break out that cigar. When Dogme 95 was brewing, I wonder if von Trier seriously thought his cin-emetic had any chance of influencing pop culture. With the release of sci-fi blockbuster District 9 , we have the answer: the handheld style has finally come of age. The setup - filmed in to-camera interviews with its pencil-neck protagonist, Wikus Van de Merwe, and intrepid Unsteadicam as he enters the extra-terrestrial township - is jarring in the very best way. And traditional complaints of motion sickness, migraine and general inner-ea...
Read more

Transcendent God

-
Over the past few months I have become much more aware of the beauty of the Grail translation of the Psalms that we use in Morning and Evening Prayer (Divine Office) - I will write more about this in the near future - and I am also finding that this has rubbed off on my attitude to the other prayers in the Office. For example, the following hymn that we prayed just over a week ago. The words struck me as if I was discovering them anew, and this after having prayed (or simply recited?) them at least once a month for about 25 years.  The optimism of the imagery struck me most forcefully and I love the idea of God hearing our prayer "before we call", i.e. as the paslmist says elsewhere "before ever a word was on my lips... you knew me through and through" (I paraphrase). See what you think yourselves... Morning Prayer of Sunday, week 3 Transcendent God in whom we live, The Resurrection and the Light, We sing for you a morning hymn To end the si...
Read more