Wording a Radiance. Daniel W. Hardy

its openness and not being exclusive; its being open is inherent to it. We can’t contain the light however much we might want to or try to. Remember YHWH: ‘I am who I am and I shall be who I shall be . . .’ Our human attempts to hold and define God become inimical to the light. We cannot grasp hold: like trying to grasp Israel for the Jews. It is one thing to have a homeland, but it’s quite another to possess it and restrict it. Think what it’s like to have a child: it’s a gifting of responsibility.

      So what is it to indwell somewhere and have a homeland without possessing it? How can we participate honestly in the huge reality of the light without needing to possess it? The divine light is lifting you to something you don’t need to possess: it is lifting you to another sphere. It enters you non-possessively and filters up within you. We’re regenerated – transformed and rebuilt – from deep within.

      People don’t believe things can be renewed in that way. They’re too stuck, too fixed; that’s the heavy imprint of materialism that most people live with. But what if we were freed from that? What if we were given new categories and could shift away from the Aristotelian fixed units of measure to something new altogether? Into a sphere of indefinite possibility and the realization that this energy can reshape and redefine everything from within? That’s the language of the resurrection: measurement is redefined. It is not pre-ordained things, plans or units that define, but this ‘unit’ of the most primal energies – the life and energy of the Spirit. I wrote a paper once, while I was at the Center of Theological Inquiry. It was never published, but it was uniquely important for me: ‘Spirit of Creation, Reconciled’. It taught me the power and depth of the Spirit that I hadn’t grasped before: that the Spirit is primary in the Trinity, the bedrock of the Trinity. It was quite a shift for me. I think, like most people, I had a fairly conventional notion of it until then, seeing the Spirit as a sort of add-on dimension to the Trinity, not deeply intrinsic to it. But then I began to realize that it is much more fundamental. I began to recognize it as the energy of the divine: always there at the beginning and before the beginning, right at the heart of God.

      People are often habitually drawn away from the light. So how, with all the leaves falling, covering it up and burying the light, how do we uncover it? This is our tragedy: extensity. We’re caught up in this thing after that thing and then another thing. When we meet someone who is open and drawn into this light – whose eyes are opened to see – it’s not just their personal experience. Something is happening in that person on behalf of humanity and he/she is making an authentic contribution: fulfilling something vital. People lose and miss the significance of who they are and what their purpose is. Sharing is important because if something good is not shared, something is missed. It’s about us sharing and participating in the depths of God and God’s goodness, indefinitely and infinitely. That’s where things get really exciting: there’s a depth in God that is fathomless. That’s where it gets quite dazzling: what might be! The infinite potential of the world. We limit ourselves so much! But the invitation is to get caught up in the re-creative Spirit of the divine: the Trinity.

      Marc Chagall’s ‘The Tribe Simeon’ window at the Hadassah Hospital Synagogue, Jerusalem24

      The world has huge potential that it’s sunk away from. But it’s important not to focus on the remedial: to focus, instead, on the huge potential: God’s goodness and Spirit at work in and among us! We need to be clever in the ways of the world and to see what’s gone wrong – and even perhaps why – but not get stuck there. It’s a matter of identifying the blocks and then moving on. It’s easy to get stuck in the blockages rather than focusing on the wonder and glory and vision of God and getting swept up and caught up in it. It’s not a matter of us working out ‘how’.

      There is a strong temporal thrust of movement forward, a perfecting movement towards the fullness of God’s creation and God’s work, far beyond what we can see. What is the fullness of God’s work with the world?25 That’s plainly what it’s all directed to: there’s a huge panoply of things that need to be attended to.26 The dynamic is there, but we have to participate in it and identify what’s involved in it. It’s partly a matter of being swept up in and by it, but it’s also a matter of acknowledging that these responsibilities are there. So often we get distracted. What is it that both attracts and limits the Church? It has become over-concentrated on its inner meaning. We need to learn how to persist with our task in the world. What are the essentials of this? Opening up the true potential and resources of human life: liturgy is one way of facilitating and helping people to enter into this creative dynamic and drawing them deeper into the light, letting it penetrate them and ‘irradiate’ them. But it’s certainly not exclusive to the Church; there are lots of other ways, too, and we need to recognize and interpret them in public life. It’s about how the Church relates to the world.

      Emerging from the Walls: From Jerusalem to Sinai and Home

      After emerging from the tunnel we went beyond the Wailing Wall and then back to where we were staying. Until this point we had been one whole group, but this was the end of the trip for most people, so we had a time of re-gathering and recollection before saying farewell to those who were about to leave. It was a significant time of sharing, listening to what different people had made of it all, and those of us who’d decided to go on went back to Bethlehem, where we had had a day visit earlier in the trip.

      Emerging from the tunnel under the Wailing Wall

      It was appalling to see how reduced the Palestinians had become: from our chintzy purpose-built hotel we could see all too clearly the huge wall that has been built to serve as a barrier to any communication between Bethlehem and Israel. It was deeply symbolic – and it was ominous, with sections of concrete abutted together.

      So it was a strange thing. We were sort of suspended into this unbelievably posh hotel, and we spent the night there, surrounded by elegant showrooms where we had the opportunity to buy whatever we might have wanted. But we could do absolutely nothing, until leaving on a bus for Sinai early the next morning.

      It was a very, very long trip – way down past the Dead Sea – and there were a few minor stops. By then I was finding it all pretty gruelling; perhaps that’s when I realized I was getting too tired.

      I had toyed with the idea of going up Sinai, but that wouldn’t have been the wise thing to do. Ideally I’d have loved to, and some did: setting off in the dark early hours – some opting for camels – and then when they came down we spent a good part of the day around the monastery there, built over the site of the burning bush.

      It looks like it was just another step in a tourist trip. But it wasn’t. It had become a pilgrimage when right back at the Jordan people realized they were inside the whole thing, being re-baptized. Then it wasn’t simply an exterior thing, but their own drama. So at the monastery at Sinai, although it could all have been treated as a museum experience, it was something much deeper. It was about a reality confronting you that was far more impressive than conventional philosophy will allow.

      The monastery sitting at the base of Sinai isn’t just an interesting geological artefact. It’s an impressive ancient Christian monastery: hugely significant for Christians and Jews and filled with connections. It has a Jewish presence there, and there is no over-rating its huge importance for Jews: it is not possessed and remains a vivid reminder of Moses’ encounter with YHWH at the burning bush. This is the burning, living bush, the living presence of God. The monastery is called ‘The Monastery of the Divine Fire’. It is a very special place; in a sense, it’s almost a bore-hole into the divine fire, with the light that goes with it: a place of ongoing light.

      The Monastery of the Divine Fire at Mt. Sinai

      It’s a place of transfiguration,