This is a basic concept in Chinese martial arts but hard to explain. It’s often rendered as “relax” but this word also has the connotation of collapsing. To stand with fang song is to be stand with structure but without tension.

This very nice article on an Irish website points out that most people are much stiffer than they realise, and talks about the importance of loosening the joints. There is also a nice series of articles on this site on Chinese swords.

I feel that all the stars shine in me. The world breaks into my life like a flood.

The flowers blossom in my body. All the youthfulness of land and water smokes like an incense in my heart; and the breath of all things plays on my thoughts as on a flute.

Fruit-Gathering LXXXIII:I
– Rabindranath Tagore

The vision of blossoming flowers is a theme in Eastern alchemy. In China, advanced practitioners are said to see visions of falling snow or flowers. I think Hildegard of Bingen may have described a vision of falling lights in one of her visions, but I can’t find the reference. This line of Tagore is more likely to refer to the opening of the chakras, symbolised as lotus flowers, but it enchanted me because it gave me the idea of flowers floating around inside my body.

You can read the full text of Fruit-Gathering here.

A friend told me about a Hawaiian reconciliation practice called ho’oponopono. This has a formula of four statements:

I love you
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you

This seems to work even if you just say it to yourself.

Most amazing of all, we seem to be able to use it for other wounded people. Just say these words – to yourself – with the intention to help someone you know is wounded, and healing seems to come.

O Lord my God,
teach my heart this day
where and how to see you
where and how to find you

You have made me and remade me,
and you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you unless you teach me,
or find you unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire
Let me desire you in my seeking
Let me find you by loving you
Let me love you when I find you

- St Anselm (1033 – 1109)

Thank you Becky for sharing this

Love gives, and gratitude receives.

Now, love needs to be received. If you have ever had a gift refused, particularly an offering of love, you will know this. Or perhaps you have refused a gift yourself. I remember once refusing an offer of hospitality because I was suspicious of the motives of this stranger I had just met. The look of pain on his face when he read this in me is something that has stayed with me ever since. Dear friend, I am sorry: please forgive me.

The first place that I began to understand this relationship between love and gratitude was in the I Ching, the Book of Changes. The relationship between giving and receiving is also the relationship between Yang, The Creative (Hexagram 1) and Yin, The Receptive (Hexagram 2). This is all explained very eloquently and with depth in the exposition of the first two hexagrams. In Western terms, the creating, giving force is love. In other words, love creates.

Re-reading Dr Emoto’s books, I saw that he had come to the same conclusions: that love is the creative, active force, and gratitude is the receptive, passive force. In the West we place so much emphasis on loving, but don’t talk much about the importance of receiving. Without gratitude, love can do nothing.

The next and final post in this series will focus on how to restore the balance between love and gratitude when it has been disturbed.

- Jeremiah 3:2-3 (NJB)

There is a lot not to like about the new missal, particularly the quite literal return to the breast-beating mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, now rendered in English Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grevious fault. Got that? We’re Catholics: it’s our fault.

In it’s favour, angels feature much more prominently. This is especially to be welcomed since the trend of suppressing mention of the angels goes back to the Jews, the Protestants of their day – but that’s a topic for another time. In the new missal, Yahweh Sabbaoth in the Sanctus (Holy, Holy) is correctly translated Lord God of Hosts, rather than the impoverished Lord God of Power and Might. As mentioned in the previous post, the words Power and Might refer to two of the nine heirarchies of angels, but you have no way of knowing this from the text.

Moreover, in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer, immediately preceeding the Sanctus, we get this:

And so, with Angels and Archangels,
with Thrones and Dominions,
and with all the hosts and Powers of heaven,
we sing the hymn of your glory,
as without end we acclaim:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Wow! Five of the nine ranks of the heavenly hosts are mentioned: not just the Angels and Archangels, but also Thrones, Dominions and Powers.

Amen

Also taken for granted was that there is a heirarchy amongst the angels. Whilst many schemes have been proposed, the standard work has always been the 5th Century De Coelesti Hierarchia written by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

The schema outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius has nine ranks in three groups of three. You can see them depicted on the magnificent medieval rood screen at The Church of St Michael and All Angels in Barton Turf in Norfolk.

• Seraphim
• Cherubim
• Thrones θρόνος (thronos) G2362
• Dominations κυριότης (kuriotēs) G2963
• Virtues δύναμις (dunamis) G1410
• Powers ἐξουσία (exousia) G1849
• Principalities ἀρχή (arche) G746
• Archangels αρχάγγελος (archangělǒs) G743
• Angels άγγελος (angelos) G32

The Cherubim and Serpahim we know from hymns and Christmas Carols, and the terms angels and archangels are familiar, but what about all the ones in the middle? Well, it’s all there in the New Testament – you just have to know how to look. Paul’s letters (especially Ephesians) abound in references to the angels:

…the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion
– Eph 1:19-21 (KJV)

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers
– Col 1:16 (KJV)

Paul is talking about angels here, but even the KJV does not capitalise the words, so you have no way of knowing. In case you are wondering, the archangels are there too (1 Th 4:16).

Paul Hurst took some excellent photographs of the Rood Screens in Norfolk. His photographs of the angels at Barton Turf were exhibited at the RC Cathedral in Norwich as part of the Art Alive in Churches project for 2011. You can see some of them in an article on the BBC News website on an earlier exhibition, Faire is the Heaven, which took place in 2010 at St Peter Hungate on Princes Street (now an exhibition space).

PS: Don’t you think that the crater looks just a little bit like the Southern Ring Nebula NGC3132?

Dr Emoto has made it his life’s work to investigate the effect of thoughts and intentions on water by exposing water to certain thoughts and then photographing the ice crystals that form as it begins to freeze. The photographs generate a strong emotional response in everyone who views them.

In 2005 Dr Emoto made a worldwide lecture tour and I attended the lecture he gave at St James in Piccadilly, London. Over 700 people came.

One of Dr Emoto’s projects is to heal polluted bodies of water by praying for them. He has found that the most effective prayer is the feeling of Love and Thanks (Gratitude). Whilst he produced lovely crystals from “love” and “gratitude” individually, he found that when the two are combined the crystals produced were the most beautiful of all. Dr Emoto writes that this discovery changed his vision of the cosmos.

We too are bodies of water and Dr Emoto’s work challenges us to think about the effect that vibrations, such as thoughts and music, are having upon us all the time. To give one example, tissue memory – memories being stored not in the brain, but in the tissues – is an unexplained phenomenon in the Western paradigm, although we have been forced to acknowledge it by cases of transferred memory in organ transplants. We do know however that hydrogen bonding in water helps to bind all the fluids and tissues of the body into a single liquid crystalline matrix.

Dr Emoto’s work has led him to the belief that Love and Gratitude are at the root of the creation of the world. In his view, the water molecule itself displays something of the relationship between love and gratitude. Water has two hydrogen atoms but only one oxygen atom, as if saying that we need twice as much gratitude as love. Dr Emoto finds this ratio demonstrated also in humans, who have two ears but only one mouth.

The next post in this series will explore this theme with reference to Chinese cosmology and the I Ching.