1) Haunted and loved by God
You can tell a lot about someone from the books they have. So, by way of introduction:
There are two bookcases in my house: the Good One, which is a lovely piece of joinery, still looking every bit as good as it did when I bought it twenty years ago; and the Other One, which has rough nails instead of dovetail joints, and has been cheaply painted white on the outside. Both are so full of books, that I have had to introduce a one-in-one-out policy. The years go by, and that policy is only getting harder to follow.
The Good Bookcase lives next to the sofa, and has a shelf dedicated to books about native orchids in their natural habitats. My routine, my week, my prayer life – all of it is measured by the seasons, and to some extent by the orchids that I expect to find as I hike through the Southern Lofties. I spend as much time reflecting on a Sunday sermon while wandering through the scrub, as I do sat it at my desk.
There’s also a shelf of travel guides which recollect two decades of adventure in my 30s and 40s. There must be a restlessness in me: my first adventure at 19 took me to France to live and work; and the last decade and a half have found me ten thousand miles away from home in Australia. It’s almost unsettling to think about it, but I’ve already lived here in this little Australian house with its rose and geranium-filled gardens and its noisy neighbours for longer than I have anywhere else.
The rest of the Good Bookcase is given over to fiction. A complete set of Agatha Christie hardcovers fills up three shelves, and another shelf carries my favourite books. Titles like An Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, Watership Down by Richard Adams, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Miracles of Santo Fico by DL Smith. Novels about home, about our relationship to nature, about love and friendship, about hope, transformation, and redemption.
The Other Bookcase is in my study, and is crammed full with books on theology, spirituality, and chaplaincy - the books I collected while studying and training for ordained ministry, and those that I’ve found helpful during the ministry years since. I have my favourites here too: Walking with Jesus in Strange Places by John Swinton, In the name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen; The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning; Diary of a Pastor’s Soul by M Craig Barnes; and In the Shelter by Padraig O’Tuama.
It was the latter book that gave me the title for my blog: in it, Padraig writes, "We were all people who were haunted and loved by God."
I confess, even during those years when I was very far from the church, I sensed God's presence and invitation. Not the tap-on-the-shoulder, draught-of-air-in-an-otherwise-still-room kind of haunting. Not foreboding or menacing in any way, but always there... Like a memory, or a trace of something I once held but had lost. A nostalgia.
There was always a sense that no matter how far away I stepped, no matter how unwanted I felt, no matter how many years I spent on the outside-looking-in, God was nevertheless always close-by and willing me home.
And for sure, I carried a corresponding hunger for that call. I still do.
Haunted and loved. Pursued and wanted. Called and chosen.
George Matheson must have known something of that same haunting, when on a sorrow-filled night he penned, "O Love that wilt not let me go."
Centuries before, St John of the Cross must have known something of that same haunting too, when he wrote, "O living flame of love that tenderly wounds my soul."
I think of David saying, "I know the Lord is always with me."
Or Jacob declaring, "surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn't know."
Or those companions on the Emmaus Road declaring, "Didn’t our hearts burn within us?"
The haunting and the loving of God.
My own story testifies to it! This blog you're reading tells that story as it continues.
It grew out of me writing a fortnightly newsletter for the church congregation I lead in Adelaide. Many of those newsletter articles are now here on this site. But long before that, there were years of journaling and writing essays while I trained for ordained ministry. And then there's all that private writing I did in 1997 and 2008 when life turned upside-down...
This blog records my attempt to find hope, joy, love and comfort in this life.
There's the occasional lament too.
And, because I'm a congregational minister, there is an inevitable sense of the church year in the background.
Doubtless my writing also carries a sense of the seasons, as the seasons control the flora of the local reserves and conservation parks where I spend so much of my time now.
Re-reading the thirty of so articles that I selected to launch this blog, I am aware of the ever-present thread running through about home and geography. There's no mystery to my homesickness. But there is some mystery why here, in this place ten thousand miles from home, I should find myself slowly coming to my senses.
Olly, November 2024
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Scripture Refs. Ps 16:8, Gen 28:16, Lk 24:32, 15:20b-24, Ps 139:8, Lk 15:17.
O’Tuama, Padraig. 2015. In the Shelter. London: Hodder Faith. Kind permission has been given by the author to use his words in the title of this blogsite.
Matheson, George. 1881-2. O Love that wilt not let me go.
John of the Cross. 1585-6. The Living Flame of Love.