Sheer Paradise! For this exotic creature
reclining on her inflatable mattress floating in the smooth waters of the
Caribbean. Was it her delicious rum punch, together the gently rocking waves,
that had lulled her to sleep? What an alarming awakening for her to find
herself surrounded by water with no land on the horizon! Never had it occurred
to her that the gentle breeze and hidden current might carry her far from
shore. Happily, a passing schooner was the answer to her frightened prayers.
At this point well might you ask what spirituality, what preaching-point, could
this priest conjure up from this maiden in distress? There she was, having
drifted out of her comfort-zone close to shore into uncertainties of the waves
and the winds of the open seas. In a kind of a way I myself am feeling ‘all at
sea,’ but I must hasten to add that I’m far better placed than she was. In my
present insecurity I’m grasping, holding onto, what is solid and inspires me
with confidence- even hope. I have my anchorage amidst the tossing and turning
waves of life.
These past few years have been most baffling and confusing to me, even
threatening. The world to which I’d become accustomed has been developing,
progressing, along a trajectory that could no way have been easily foreseen,
planned and accepted. I’m not thinking of all those spectacular advances in
technology. For me many of these are cause for rejoicing.
I’m apprehensive as I’ve witnessed rock-solid traditional values being eroded
into shifting sands. Long past is the age of the certainties with which I was
brought up! Then my parents and teachers had no doubts about what was good
behaviour and what was bad. Society had set the tone. No-one who deviated from
its customs and conventions could presume the right to live according to what
is cutely described as an ‘Alternative lifestyle.’
What used to be accepted as ‘Absolutely Correct’ standards of behaviour is
being replaced by a lifestyle of recent invention (dare I call it a monster? )
that is idolized as being ‘Politically Correct.’ This is a creature that is
able to re-invent itself according to times and circumstances…with the many
being expected to conform to the opinionated few.
As something of a loner I have to insist that that there are non-negotiable,
God-given, standards for human conduct. And yet I’m no hard-crusted, legalist,
who plucks out of well-worn manuals of moral theology slick solutions for
real-life, flesh and blood, crises of conscience. Pope Francis has surely
brought home to us that there is such a thing as Christ-like pastoral sensitivity
and compassion.
A wholesome sign of the times is that as never before people are insisting upon
their need for emotional fulfillment in personal relationships. And yet I’m
bewildered, I feel threatened, by the raucous clamour for rights to this or
that. I’m appalled at the determined smothering of any mention of duties and
responsibilities. In all this confusion Pilate might query, ‘What is truth?’
He’d get the jeering reply that it exists no more. I hear the unsung chorus ‘I
do my own thing-my way. You, and you, and you can all do your own thing, your
way. I won’t get in your way. You keep out of my way!’
Before us is a cocktail of mixed messages! Pity the parent, pity the school
teacher, attempting to prepare youngsters for life in this world of confusion
galore! Pity the maturing youngster striving to weave a way between being told
one thing by one adult and hearing the very opposite from someone else. We live
in a muddle of opinions – all voiced with the force of convictions.
Would not today’s adolescent and maturing adult, easily identify with the
hapless girl adrift on heaving high seas – perilously floundering with nothing
secure to grasp?
I put it to you that survival through all this can be found within a symbol of
hope and security taken from the early days of Christianity: THE ANCHOR! With
its crossbar it reminds us of the cross on which Jesus saved mankind. The
inspiration for this symbolism must have been taken from the Letter to the
Hebrews (6:18-19): "Hold fast to the hope set before us which we have as
ANCHOR FOR THE SOUL."
Christ is my Way, my Truth, my Life, my Anchor. He speaks through His Church.
While the girl on the drifting mattress was downcast, I, in the Church, am
upbeat!
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