On Job: Making Our Claim
Seeking a Liturgy of the Wild, (Part 25)
Hello friends, before we head into the final part of Job, I’m delighted to share news on an exciting new book release from my small press, as well as tour dates for Ireland this autumn. Good cheer, Martin
New release from Cista Mystica Press: Sunlilies: Eastern Orthodoxy As a Radical Counterculture
Upcoming tour, Ireland, October 2023, info and tickets: Medicine House Tour
God is the origin of both need and supply, the father of our necessities, the abundant giver of the good things. Right gloriously he meets the claims of his child! The story of Jesus is the heart of his answer, not primarily to the prayers, but to the divine necessities of the children he has sent out into his universe.
George MacDonald, sermon on Job
As we’ve all heard many times – and are absorbing the reality – getting older is bittersweet. I wasn’t great at being young. It didn’t quite stick, but I’m not yet old. In mid-life I experience all sorts of satisfactions that were denied me back then. I get to earn a living doing what I truly love, I cherish being a father with a hugely interesting daughter, I have real, abiding friendships about me, I have a faith. And I also feel the swiftness of it all, and a body that in terms of its energy peaked sometime back. I no longer take for granted endless decades rolling out before me. I’m having some of the quintessential encounters of lived experience, and yes, it’s paradoxical and bittersweet. This flower I have in my hand, by nature of its very bloom is already dying. Sounds trite but it’s not when it really hits you. We are all working out some variant of this.
It may seem odd to speak so personally in response to the story of Job, but if we don’t I think we are rather missing a trick. I don’t want to keep it at a distance because it’s telling me so much about the human experience of consciousness, of dark material.