Anzac Day this coming Wednesday.
That gives you time to nip down to the local library and grab a copy of a book written 40 years ago about one Anzac Day in the life of one fictional boy.
Five pages from the end of the book it says:
“Did Margaret know that he had fought for her? Did she care? Was this the way it was with wars? The people you fought for not caring. Did you fight for nothing? After it was all over did they all go home, not looking back, shrugging it off, forgetting that you weren’t the same any more?”
* * *
Why did he say that?
You have to read the book to find out.
It is a book about a particular boy.
It is a book about all of us.
It is a very odd book.
It is a very good book.
It is called “Bread and Honey”
Author: Ivan Southall.

By Thy blood that flowed from Thee in Thy bitter agony;

By the scourge so meekly borne; by the purple robe of scorn,

Jesus Saviour hear our cry, Thou hast suffered just as we;

Hear the loving litany we Thy children sing to Thee.

By the thorns that crowned thy head; by Thy sceptre of a reed;

By Thy foot-step faint and slow, weighed beneath Thy cross of woe;

By the nails and pointed spear; by Thy people’s cruel jeer;

By Thy dying prayer which rose, begging mercy for Thy foes;

By the darkness black as night, blotting out the sun from sight;

By the cry with which in death, Thou didst yield Thy parting breath,

By Thy weeping Mother’s woe; by the sword that pierced her through,

When, in anguish, standing by, on the cross she saw Thee die.

. . . adapted from the writings of Irish novelist, Cecilia Mary Caddell.

Today has been declared “Earth Hour Day”.

You are requested to turn off your lights from 8.30pm to 9.30pm as a symbolic act declaring your support for creating a cleaner, better, more just future.

Based, they say, on combating human-caused climate change.

Nothing wrong with turning off the lights for an hour.

You can say your prayers just as well in the dark.

Better, perhaps, as there will be fewer visible distractions.

For many people it is probably a long time since they last gave an hour to contemplating God.

Or spending an hour in any kind of quiet, reflective frame of mind.

* * *

So the idea of a quiet hour of solitude in the dark is a good one.

But best find a different time to do it. Not tonight.

The 31 March Earth Hour is supported by activists like Julia Gillard, the World Wildlife Fund and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

That is a big worry.

These people don’t just want you to turn off your lights — they have policies in mind that will mean there are no lights to turn on.

They want to phase out coal-burning energy sources.

They make claims about the capabilities of solar energy, wind-energy and so forth which, at this stage of history, are pure imagination.

* * *

To sum up, common sense suggests that we all switch our lights off regularly for the good of our mental and spiritual health.

But make sure they are ON this evening between 8.30 and 9.30.

An Australian citizen, Brian Schmidt, is one of the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.

His work is said to show that the universe is expanding faster and faster – not slower and slower, as we were being told to believe until recently.

Why so fast? Because of “dark energy” mate.

Dark energy is something that possibly does not exist. But if it does exist, it comprises 70-odd percent of the universe.

The Nobel Academy spokespersons described his discovery as “astounding”.

It isn’t easy to be astounded by something you can’t really imagine . . . .

And something which we will, almost certainly, be told is wrong after all, within a few months or years.

,* * *

Science is something beyond most of us.

The one thing we know for sure is that science is always wrong.

Isn’t that  what “progress” means?

That what we know today proves that what they believed yesterday was wrong . . . . .

And, presumably, what we believe today will be proved wrong tomorrow.

* * *

Fortunately science doesn’t matter very much.

What matters more is how we use the things scientists make it possible to invent.

Things as diverse as life-saving antibiotics . . . and life-terminating bombs . . . .

Plus chemicals to increase crop yields . . . and chemicals to defoliate the crops of those we hope to starve to death.

Science has nothing to do with right and wrong.

Yet are not right and wrong, ultimately, all that matters?

Science can help a little bit, insofar as it reveals a universe (multiverse or whatever) that has Order.

Which confirms, to the un-blinkered, that God exists.

I have pinched most of the following.

Hope it is some help to somebody out there:

I asked God to spare me pain. God said, “No. Hardship is your chance to detach yourself from worldly things and draw closer to me.”

I asked God to give me patience. God said, “No. Patience is a by-product of suffering. It isn’t something given. It is something to be learned.”        

I asked God to take away my bad habits. God said, “No. It is not for me to take them away, but for you to give them up.”

I asked God to give me happiness. God said, “No. I give you what is my will for you. You must decide to be happy about it.”

* * *

Catholics who pray the Divine Office prayers daily, begin every morning with this act of self-giving to our Creator:

Lord God, all-powerful, you have brought us to the beginning of this day.

By your power, keep us on the road to salvation.

Do not let us fall into any sin today . . . .

But grant that all our words, all our thoughts and actions may tend toward the fulfilment of your law of holiness.

Amen

July 31 is, for Catholics, the feast day of Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556).

A soldier by profession, Ignatius, while convalescing from a leg wound, did some reading including a book entitled “Lives of the Saints”.

This affected him so much that he decided to devote the rest of his life to God.

He became a priest and founded the Society of Jesus (otherwise known as the Jesuits).

He composed a program of “Spiritual Exercises” – 30 days of guided meditations on examining one’s conscience, contemplating the Passion of Christ and making practical resolutions re how to live so as to please God.

* * *

The Exercises have been adapted to a 5-day form suitable for lay people.

They start with what Saint Ignatius calls, “The First Principle and Foundation” of life:

“Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by doing so, to save his soul.

All other things on the face of the earth are created for men in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created.

It follows that one must use other created things, insofar as they help towards that end — and free oneself from them, insofar as they are obstacles to that end.

Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things — not wanting health more than illness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one – desiring and choosing only what helps us more towards that end for which we are created.”

* * *

The Exercises are a crash course in taking life seriously.

We have one life.

In it we decide our attitude to God.

Just one life, then  judgement.