ALONG THE BEAUTIFUL WAY (Climb or be Carried Advent 2024)

In the past I understood AI in relation to farming and the person making it happen was sometimes referred to as “the bull”, but now AI has another meaning – artificial intelligence – and I have used it to alter photos, removing bits that I don’t like. Sometimes with serious intent and other times just doing it for fun.

As I approach another milestone in my life I am naturally looking back over the years I have lived out in this world and part of me would like to alter some of what has taken place. If I could, I would delete aspects of my personal history – the embarrassing things, things of which I am ashamed. And I would also like to delete evidence of my vanity, much of which is public in both photos and writing – and I could, even might delete some of these, especially the writings. Such an amount of vanity and self in them!

Then, last Monday, I thought – so what! So what if I am vain! It would be better not to be, but deleting the evidence of my vanity would be dishonest because it is testament to the truth of who I am. Part of the truth.

I happened to be travelling through Stratford, on my way back from a most lovely time with my Pallottine Community and walking from one station to another. Darkness had fallen on the early evening and crowds were still about. It was magnificent and everything about the place drew me upwards. You literally have to go up into the vast Westfield Centre. You can climb the many steps, or you can be carried by a series of escalators. Climb or be carried!

There’s a Christmas feel about the place, a human Christmas feel – even if it’s not overtly religious. And along the beautiful way as I was grappling with some of the mountains in my head, the mental climbing, there was a sudden, brief, and most gentle fall of snow that caused me to pause, to look up and say “oh!” I was a child in that moment, and I smiled, and it seemed that the mountains of my mind simply dissolved like the snow melting on my coat sleeve.

It is the Word for Advent – that the mountains would be laid low and the valleys filled in so that God’s people could pass through more easily. There was a time when that Word saddened me. On a day in Advent many years ago, John Fitzpatrick and I were travelling though Connemara. We stopped – maybe in Maam Valley – to stand in admiration of the mountains and I said to God that I didn’t want these mountains to be flattened because they are so awe-inspiring, such beautiful reminders of the Creator.

But now I understand the need for an easier passage through the experiences of life. Physically I need to take the escalator because climbing the steps is too painful. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally I need another kind of escalator to take me up to where I need to go. And God provides this, reminding me that we do not ascend to the ultimate heights of the Spirit by our own strength. Only by Grace are we carried up the summit. Perhaps too, it is only by the grace of our injuries that we allow God to do what only He can do.

The effort of our younger years is absolutely necessary by way of training us in what matters most in life but once we are sufficiently trained, then we surrender and let go and He will raise us up on eagle’s wings, bear us on the breath of dawn, make us to shine like the sun, and hold us. Hold us! In the palm of His Hand.

In Him there is no time – no past and no future – just an eternal present, so that the promise is already being fulfilled. My dear and departed friend Shirley said to me one Advent day in Makiungu, “He is already with us in our waiting!” Amen.

"Take off the garment of your sorrow and af Take fliction, O Jerusalem,

and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God.

Put on the robe of the righteousness from God;

put on your head the crown of the glory of the Everlasting.

For God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven."

Baruch 5

AI - I moved myself but left my arm behind 😁