Augustine cuts the crap
Lizzie and Jon constructed a beautiful service for us on Sunday about trash and junk and rubbish in our lives and getting away from it. In the prayers it struck me that saying ‘Lord in your mercy’ is about how flat on God’s mercy we are, helpless on his mercy to clear the garbage we immerse ourselves in and can quietly drown amidst.
Preparing for this Sunday’s service Tim and I have been looking into TS Eliot’s Wasteland to work with the excerpt that we’re framing our services around this month, and this morning I found this bit of St Augustine’s Confessions which Eliot quotes (‘To Carthage then I came / Burning burning burning burning / O Lord Thou pluckest me out / O Lord Thou pluckest / burning’).
“And He is there, though they perceive Him not… And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties; but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out mercifully; sometimes not perceiving it, when I had but lightly lighted upon them; otherwhiles with pain, because I had stuck fast in them.”
