I took as my reading today a little snippet from the Gospel of Mark,
As some will remember I read the whole gospel here on Good Friday. About twenty souls dropped in and out between noon and three, and of those perhaps a half dozen  stayed with us for the whole event. Vanessa played our Steinway piano very beautifully. Like all such acts of devotion this event has remained with me and seems to have energised some insights and thoughts about faith. Perhaps this is what the discipline of lenten study is all about.

I noticed that in Mark we hear Jesus say to his disciples that there is a difference between the way we see things and the way God does. He says that these things which are impossible for you are possible for God, because you see as people see – and not as God sees.

This interested me greatly because of the lenten reading that we’ve been doing into mysticism and women mystics; I might not need to remind you that we were struck by the continuity of thought throughout those mystics – who were aware of the presence of God in all things.
My second reading, and the hymn based on it, were a very good example of this from the early visionary woman Hildegard of Bingen who sees God in every thing that lives. In one version of this vision Hildegard says
‘For Wisdom is the root whose blossom is the resounding Word…’
she sees God throughout the whole cycle of organic life, from root to blossom, a lovely insight at this blossomy time of year.

The poet

James Kirkup expresses his understanding in a different but nonetheless similar way in his poem

Broad Daylight – on not understanding (which is Zen)

Out of all this world
take this forest.

Out of all the forest
take this tree.

Out of all the tree
take this branch.

Out of all the branch
take this leaf.

And on this leaf
that is like no other

observe this drop of rain
that is like no other.

And in this single drop
observe the reflection

of leaves and branches
of the entire tree,

of the forest,
of all the world,

the light of stars
in the light of day.

James Kirkup

Its a poem in which Kirkup attempts to articulate the interdependence of all things, how no one thing can be separable from the others, and how all can be reflected in a single element – a raindrop reflects the whole world, and even the invisible world; the stars in broad daylight.

No one is an island, as John Donne almost said in his famous poem – which was actually first part of an essay by this great theological thinker;
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
…
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

In that passage in Mark, a lovely passage I think, where Jesus heals the blind, he takes him away from the crowd and cures him, at first asking ‘can you see anything?’, asking the man to describe his sight, and the man says; ‘I see people like trees walking.’
What a weird image! Its typical of Mark’s gospel – which is full of miracles and wonders. The people seem like trees walking.

And when the cure is completed the man looks intently and sees properly. Some one told me that the story illustrates that clarity is something which requires persistence, and I’m sure that’s true.

And I may be wrong but the image of trees walking also seems to me to be an image or vision of people who lack the facility of ‘connectedness’, of relationship.Woodenly going about their business, minding none but their own … staring at their phones maybe… feeling alienated from each other, uprooted from their culture – maybe even alienated from themselves…

Last week when I was talking about the Our Father I said that Jesus saw religion not as superstition, but as a relationship.

We often take faith to mean ‘belief in something for which there is no evidence’, but I ‘m not sure that what it means at all. Faith is not just a very strongly held opinion, despite what all the celebrity mockers of religion suggest. I think it means a connection, a relationship with the divine and sacred, a way of seeing which looks for connectedness, looks for relatedness, looks for participation.

Another mystic we touched on during Lent, Simone Weil, said the really important thing is not to see God in everything but to see everything as God sees it. And she goes on to say that this vision will compel you to act on God’s behalf, to do whatever small thing you can for God’s sake…

Despite his title ‘on not understanding’, I think that’s exactly what James Kirkup manages to do in his poem, seeing the relationships which the blind cant see…

Seeing God wherever we look, as the mystics do, means also seeing as God sees and not as humans, seeing relationships and interdependence, seeing God in the hungry and the imprisoned in the lonely and the anxious, and seeing as God sees will impel us to other kinds of action too, action for change, action, above all, to relate, to be compassionate and act in community, to protect and consider others. If we look intently – we look for justice.