Eremos

Once again the contributors to this last issue for 2011 challenge us to expand our sense of who we are, who God is and who others are, in this global community.

Rod Pattenden's piece on the winner of the Blake Human Justice Award is a good place to start if you are ready for this challenge. Reading this is a real treat, not only in terms of well-crafted, thoughtful content, but also in modelling how to 'read' a work of visual art. No doubt its relevance to the current asylum seekers debate will not escape you. Would that there were more artists and writers informing our politics!

Alison Croft's 'Sharing our Faith' suggests the benefits of transcending religious difference through interfaith dialogue. For example, how might Michael Lewin's description of a Buddhist practice of forgiveness in 'The Sacred Mandala of Forgiveness' fit with a Christian understanding of the forgiveness journey?

 'Waiting for Grace', Jennifer Burns' reflection on her experience as a mental health chaplain, addresses another form of diversity. Jennifer describes how engaging with people in those liminal/wilderness spaces where mental health is sorely challenged has been transformative for her as well as those to whom she ministered.

A number of pieces invite us to a more contemplative way of being. Roger Housden's 'Why Poetry is Necessary' reminds us of similarities between poetry and contemplation. In both practices we are paying attention to what is there, though previously hidden by our lack of awareness.

Some of us may have a poet's eye but not a poet's pen. Fortunately, others, for example, Noel Davis and Bridget McKern, have both, and can invite their readers to see things differently. Which of their images about the spiritual journey do you most resonate with at the moment? Owen Ronald's 'Camera Obscura' also shows us how we can harvest illuminating metaphors by sifting through our life experiences and crafting these into a story.

Maybe a retreat would release your creative side. Bridget's poems emerged from an Eremos retreat, as did McCartney's 'Soul Card' image. John Sullivan's 'Experiencing God at the Far Side' is a grounded account of a do-it-yourself retreat.

That brings us to two contrasting pieces on the theme of love. Rob Brennan is trying to find a language of love that would express friendship in a world where 'love has been hijacked by our sex-obsessed society to be closely associated with eros'. From Drew Hanlon's review of Stephen Ogden's Love Upside Down, I suspect that eros does not always stay within the discrete category assigned him by the Ancient Greeks or CS Lewis. But then the mystics have always known this.

I leave you with a challenge from Headley Beare's review: '… on the edge of boundaries there is always the challenge to look beyond where you are'.

Frances MacKay.