‘We endeavoured to go into Macedonia’

Overlooking St Barnabas', Pimlico (foto: balintbeckett)

This is almost a paradigm for mission what we read in Acts. ‘And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us to preach the Gospel unto them.’ (Acts 16,9-10).
Our age is full of images. As if our culture lived in a constant ‘fantasy eruption’. We are trying to grasp a secure position in an unstable, fast changing world. We try to understand where we are, where we should arrive to, and what we should do. That is why the feverish images ‒ fragmented attempts to tell our story.

Among the fantasy images of the age, Paul’s historical vision re-emerges. We Christians should hold to this Biblical example. Literally, this is our founding vision. Without this, the teaching of Christ would have never arrived from Asia to Europe.

‘There stood a man of Macedonia’. I read it as a profound cultural symbol. Our culture can be seen, personified, in this ‘man of Macedonia’. This ‘man’ can have many names. There stands the postmodern person; the post-religious person; or our post-denominational culture. Name does not really matter. What matters is the new missiological situation. Are we brave enough to enter the unknown ‒ our culture under many names?

The passage of Acts (Ch 16,6-end) becomes a new paradigm precisely at this point. It is an archetypal image of what happens when the Christian kerygma (proclaiming our redemption by Christ) relies on God’s providence. ‘After we had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia’ (Acts 16,10).

What happens when there is a full dependence on God’s ‘unknown love’? Acts profoundly (unconditionally!) encourages us. See what happens: people in this strange new land welcome Paul’s arrival. Names are not simply historical here but profoundly symbolic. Lydia ‘heard us’. With many others, she was one of them ‘whose heart the Lord opened’ (Acts 16,14.) What is the symbolic element? However secular our culture is, or it might become, there always remains a ‘feminine’ responsiveness at the heart of it. However rigid our culture be on its ‘animus’ surface, its ‘anima’ is always desiring ‘to be judged to be faithful to the Lord’ (Acts 16,15).

Man and women from this culture will always welcome this encounter. This desire ‘to be touched by’ and our new state of ‘being sent’ into this ‘happening history’ or history in the make (M. Buber) transcends inherited forms of prayer and ecclesial forms. Let us be brave! Let salvation history happen. Let God be God among us. Let us see God in the ‘Macedonian man’. Let us come to God by understanding the desire of the ‘Macedonian’.

*

The ‘endeavour to go into Macedonia’ was confirmed by powerful signs. The imprisoned Paul and Silas escape from their imprisonment. ‘And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises to God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s hand were loosed.’ (Acts 16,25-26) A very rich (symbolic) image indeed. The diverse, often destructive, forces of our culture can coalesce in the service of renewal.

The conversion of the prison guard is a bonus. It tells the unlistened to question of the true self of our culture. ‘What must I do to be saved’? (Acts 16,30)

29.04.2015

‘Because it is the price of blood’

 

“And the chief priests took the silver piece, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.” (Mt 27,6)

This decision reveals a sense of that certain deeds should be separated from the life of the community. There are decisions and morally questionable acts which, if not separate, remain infectious. The point is that a morally questionable solution (political, cultural, local decision) should be reflected upon. The above biblical scene of Judas’ betrayal when he returns the sign of his betrayal is such an attempt. The arrest, trial, and planned execution of Jesus, from the part of the Jewish religious leaders, was a corporate decision. It was morally wrong; also with dubious motives in the background when they handed him over to the Roman authorities in order to kill him. The recognized need for this ‘separation’ by the Jewish leaders, however unfinished their solution remained, offers an important moral to our present.

Our age, our Western culture, our particular political culture, tends to forget that wrong acts need to be mourned. ‘The price of blood’ remains invisible and mingled with the life of the community. The way in which the prime minister (D.C.) finds a solution to sell weapons to Ukraine, via a ‘third party’, an Arabic country, is the apex of hubris and hypocrisy. Christians, in all circumstances, should give voice to the ‘innocent blood’, on behalf of the victims. If we Christians do not cry out for peace and reconciliation, who else would? In a global world, burdened with endless conflicts, every deed should contribute to stopping violence and the threat of war. Biblical gestures, far deeper than that of the chief priests in our passage, should be performed. As gestures of reconciliation, common sense, and profound desire for peace. Why is it, that the acts of justice, rooted in love and self examination, do unmask whenever and wherever ‘there is a price of blood’? Through prayer, surely, we will recognize any collective act, which contributes to violence, should be recognized and removed from the life of the community. However painful they might be as the signs of our betrayal of ‘the innocent blood.’

 

26 February

Psalm 119

“Thy statues have been my songs: in the house of my pilgrimage. I have thought upon thy name, O Lord, in the night season: and have kept thy law.” (Psalm 119,54-55)

There is such a profound need to examine and clean our inner history. This is an elementary need to merge our whole being with the Lord of history. His Laws are purifying us. Our vision gets purified and wholesome: we can see  more of our truer self.

‘And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy commandments’ (Ps 119,45). Seeking this inner law of History, seeking the commandments of the Lord of history, is freedom. Freedom can be understood in terms of getting closer to the genuine ‘self’, individual and collective, which God desires for us. That is why, the Psalmist can say: “I made my humble petition in thy presence with my whole heart.” (Psalm 119,58) This ”striving” brings about a change. We become capable of interceding for ourselves and the needs of our world, particularly those of our local history. The fruit of this attempt to synchronize our self with that of God, that we become responsive. That is, we can see these needs, and respond promptly. This is the way that history is being healed, it is less and less legged behind God’s vision of our history. ‘I made haste, and prolonged not the time: to keep thy commandments.’ (Psalm 119,60)

These are the closing lines of the Psalm, which are most telling of our present. “O learn me true understanding and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments” (v.66) This attempt to embrace God’s vision of “the whole heart” which is called to see and pray, leads us to feel pain whenever this inspired self-knowledge is refused. For Christians it is time to pray for their political leaders that they may understand: selling weapons to conflict zones, like Ukraine, is morally wrong. Every troop, every weapon sent to the region is a powerful symbol of our blindness to payer and our truer self.

25 February

Late Night Tea With Bartok

 

The day-to-day events of life should not overwrite the normal course of our days. The shocking attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is such a disruption of 'normal' history. As a reaction to the unacceptable killing of the members of the editorial board, there were millions on the streets of France and Europe. As an expression of the shock we all felt.

Killing is unacceptable. This form of terror is rightly refused and protested with full force.

Yet, my feelings are mixed. This is equally shocking to see the arrogance of the French 'Gloire'. Why do I feel that the 'old reactions' of politics can no longer be trusted? I do not know the answer. Only a sketchy thought is outlining itself. What one can feel is the lack of a historical distance. We simply lack distance from the situation, that sufficient distance, which would provide us with genuine answers as to what has happened.

It is very difficult indeed to trust a political response which is unable to make a fundamental distinction. Namely, that the terrorist attack was a response not to a religious provocation, as the killers claimed, but to an erroneous foreign policy of the EU. The hubris of the EU (hubris in the sense of not being analytical of the complexity of situations and processes) resulted in a mess in the Middle-East. This warfare was not based on the collective decision of the citizens of the EU. The allies simply have been talking down to these regions from the 'superego of Western democracy'. We can not see that this terrorist attack is not an attack on Western values, the 'European man' or on the 'freedom of speech'. This was a form of military retaliation, a response to the war which our countries and with the underlying national-economical interests are fighting; with their sophisticated weapons and diplomatic machineries. Now the enemy hit back well beyond the front-lines.

Personally, I would be grateful, if religion would be left out from the public discourse in interpreting these tragic events. Europe's colonising attitude has backfired. How do we think that bombing Islamist extremists, destabilising the peace of distant regions, fragile status quos (conceived in blood and tyrannies) is something 'distant' for ever? Why is there such hubris in the power of our weapons and just cause?

What made me put these thoughts down in writing is an uncanny thought. Why is it that our Western political culture is incapable of the humility, at least now, when we are mourning the victims and denouncing the bastard act of terrorism, to make an apology, however small. Yes, to start with an apology, whatever we say afterwards, for offending religious sentiments and feelings. For while through the Muhammad cartoons, and their angry re-publication we provoke an extremist minority, nevertheless, we do hurt the religious sentiments of a balanced Muslim majority? Is it too difficult to see? Until Europe cannot start his denouncement of the barbaric attack with this apology, the old colonising attitude, the superiority of the 'white Gloire' remains. But I should really conclude now. I have no answers. I feel emptiness and anger. As if being caught up in the whirlwind of hubris: In the furnaces of karma, bad karma, which is our death mask on our truer face and self.

*

Bartók's music is a consolation. These nights, his Concerto for Orchestra and Third Piano Concerto are my guides. In the very last 1941 issue of the Hungarian literary magazine, Nyugat, I am just reading an appreciation of the 60 year old Bartok's musical achievement. The author gave an overview of the musical development of the Hungarian composer (who will die four years later in exile in the United States). Bence Szabolcsi, in the closing words of his essay, gives a profound understanding of this musical evolution. Bartok's unfolding oeuvre is a parallel ethical development. He handed over his heritage as a resource, 'perhaps still in time, in order to save Europe's truer soul. Bartok represents the nobler and immortal part of our perishing world, in that wider, renewed world, which shall be towering over the wreckages of the old one.' (Nyugat, 1941. 4.)

This music gives me the missing distance from these days. All of us, ordinary producers of the world's bad karma and its professional creators, our politicians who have lost the sense of history (the ability to think with the sense of historical distance), can learn from the vast spaces which this music reveals. Bartok, it is said, synthesised all the available musical knowledge of his age. He did even something more: he transcended this knowledge and created this heritage anew as a fresh message; a new voice indeed. It is a very rare moment within a cultural canon. In this space, in which life is imperishable, always safeguarded by a mysterious presence, we can relearn our presence. For me, this night, this is the message of the Third Piano Concerto, written on his deathbed, as a present for his wife's birthday. The distance from our present exists. This saving distance of love exists, it is within reach. Within a distance which we can equally miss. Which proves to be stronger in us: karma or grace?

 
 

12.01.2015, Bialystok, Poland.

Psalm 71 and the Late Turner

'Upon you have I leaned from my birth, when you drew me from my mother's womb, my praise shall be always with you' (Ps 71:6). Upon you have I leaned from my birth, when you drew me from my mother's womb, my praise shall be always with you' (Ps 71:6). Upon you have I leaned from my birth, when you drew me from my mother's womb, my praise shall be always with you' (Ps 71:6). Listening to the origins is re-valuated in these times. The turmoils of the age, the constant machine-noise of the city (in my case, London) demands this turning back. What happens, what do we observe when we look back to our long shadow, our past? In the well of our depth, we find an original commitment to God. This is true despite the fact that neither can we properly name Him, nor commit ourselves immediately to his Presence. The Paslmist's words form a call to contemplate this lost image of God, which is the lost image of ourselves. Also, that of history, which we cannot name either.

This is the birth of the psychic space in us. This interior is long awaited. It cries out for our ability to name things, to reflect upon our lives. 'Let my mouth be full of your praise, and your glory all the day long.' (Psalm 71:8) This is in this flexible space, regained inner order, where the chaos of our world can be accommodated again. I read this surrounding chaos of history personified in the request: 'In you, O Lord, I seek refuge, let me never be put to shame... Deliver me from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the evildoer and the oppressor.' (Psalm 71:1.4.)

All judgement and action, political, moral, and spiritual must be born from this inner place. If we do not have 'names' for the events of our world, how could we act with integrity in it? 

*

Our most profound instinct is not sexual but social. That is, the desire for the 'other', to create and sustain a loving relationship. It seems, there is an even deeper 'instinct' in us, an even more intense passion. This is the above passion for words, the desire to create and recreate the human interior. In other words, this most profound passion in us for 'naming' the world. As this being the precondition of shaping it for the better.

As an illustration of this ability to create the syntax and grammar of seeing our reality in a human way, Turner's late paintings come to mind from Tate Britain. The exhibition 'Late Turner' aptly illustrate our turning back to the hidden and lost God-image which lies behind us, somewhere at the origins of our journey. Turner's increasingly becoming abstract and puzzling for his contemporaries in the last decade of his life is the realm of the Psalmist. The visible lines of nature, shapes and contours, indeed become more and more blurred and undefined. This is an expression of a kind of historical uncertainty. The late 1840's were indeed a turning point perceived by the ageing artist. The object of these late canvases is only seemingly a particular point in nature. Though the scenes are often named with geographical precision, the subject matter of the late Turner is much bigger than the visible. It is history itself. That historical path, increasingly complex and unreflected, which occupies Turner's failing eyes.

Room 4 bears the title 'That Real Sea Feeling'. Room five is 'Last Works'. There is one painting which captures my memory in particular now, when meditating on Psalm 71. 'Storm'. The sea, with its waves, is as if in a distance. The brute force of nature, water erupting on the cliffs, is clearly stated. Yet, the waves are seen from a distance. Their power is highlighted if we translate it into the categorical imperative which the Psalmist, the observer of our history, formulates. We must see beyond the chaotic forces of the raging sea of History. One must focus on a distant face, our innermost thirst being reflected in this, at present invisible, imago Dei. The face of God as the presence of desired human interior. This tentative recognition straight away brings to memory the last, calm sea paintings of Turner. When the sea is tamed only to pose for us motionless, in white, in quiet breading.

13.10.2014. Pimlico, London.



Prayer 

O Lord, open in me your wisdom.
Open in me your compassion for the world.
Open in me your never failing Presence in order that
I may regain all the time I lost and emptied of love.
Open in me, o Lord, the richness of your vision,
in order to better perceive you and all the needs
which become visible in the light of your Face,
to which we should turn in time, now.

A beautiful space

 

There is an immense beauty in attempting to find a nourishing centre for our lives. Christians put an emphasis on finding the vivifying centre. Both, personal and 'general' history invite us to this journey. While praying Psalms 132 and 133 from Common Worship, Morning Prayer, a special 'wind' is perceived. It comes from the centre of our lives… It is whirling, moving, and moves us, makes us open.

It is said that identity is always best defined in terms of a 'double identity'. Being an English-European, a Christian-European, an Anglo-Catholic ‒ are expressions of this firmer grounded identity. If we have no other option than living in a world which has become irrevocably pluralistic, global, and complex, we need to build up a dialogue between our self and the history. Finding this healthy gap between us and the world is liberating. It is that 'space' which makes us humans. In it we have distance from the events of the world; and from ourselves.

The Temple of the Lord is a powerful expression of this need. Also, the 'Temple' is that pole which sets up a space for reflection. This 'psychic space' is filled up by love. That is why the vision of the world and ourselves which we acquire in this human interior, is the only objective vision of our lives. Psalm 132 makes us understand the value of the effort to build a Temple to the Lord or restore it. 'I will not allow my eyes to sleep, nor let my eyelids slumber, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob' (Psalm 132,4-5).

However impenetrable and chaotic the world surrounding us might be, we know one thing for sure. This is the core of the Biblical experience of the divine. Namely, that it is Beauty which attracts and redeems us. We must utter these beautiful words which can reverse the whole course of derailed human history. 'Behold how good and pleasant it is to dwell together in unity.  It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard.' (Psalm 132,2-3) This alternative history of beauty in us which is solely redemptive for whatever happens in time and space.  

 

Prayer

 

O, Lord of history. Through the gate of your Psalms

Let us enter into the beautiful dance which happens between you and our world.

It is our alternative history, the story of our true self. We pray

That in this beautiful space, the river of your love, we might realise

That everything becomes real in you, Lord of history.

Make us also realise that this miracle of transformation,

Of which core is our desire for unity, cannot take place

Without others, without our fellow human beings being

Put to the centre of our lives. Amen.

 

16.09.2014

 

A Prayer in your Presence

The very sad news that jihadists beheaded their British hostage, David Haines, prompts our response, in terms of prayer. The words of the Psalmist came to mind from today's Morning Prayer. "The Lord watches over the stranger in the land; he upholds the orphan and widow; but the way of the wicked he turns upside down." (Psalm 146,9) Putting aside the political interests of the sides in this already global 'Third World War', we can focus on the objective wound which has opened up with this killing. Indeed, there is an objective damage caused in History. This killing is remembered in Salvation History. It is Salvation-History, precisely on the ground, that God does not let injustice done by humans to humans pass. From a global perspective, and this is part of restoring our sense of history, we are called to mourn David. The wound emerged in his loss, is not an empty space. It is not a passing empty hole in time and space. If we have a closer look at his passing away from among us, we can see the emergence of the Angel of History in the very gate of the killing. He is wearing a red robe and is erect about the scene. The Lord watches over the killers. They are under judgement not by humans, but the Lord himself. The way of the wicked indeed has been turned upside down. Divine judgement has already found the killers already.

We are also given another presence. In the disquieting shadow that the Angel projects, we are hearing the words of the Psalm, uttered and prayed by the Spirit of Salvation History. "Who gives justice to those that suffer wrong and bread to those who hunger. The Lord looses those that are bound; The Lord opens the eyes of the blind." (Psalm146, 6-7) This is a judgement upon us, survivors. A chance for healing.

Prayer

O, God, remember the pain of the family of David Haines.

Awake us from our manifold blindness

and restore the sense in us that we belong to your Salvation History

where no injustice remains invisible and forgotten. O, God, our

Lost Father, as part of our return to your house of love,

make us partakers of your of peacemaking in the world.

Send us, first, to the sources from which Peace may spring from,

then to our world, which cannot see from the tremendous thirst

it has become. Amen.

14.09.2014

On Psalms 113,115 ­- Praying with the Books of Common Prayer and Common Worship (Psalm-meditations)

"From the rising of the sun to its setting / let the name of the Lord be praised." (Psalm 113,3). Psalms 113 and 115 are allocated as today's prayers for the Morning Prayer. Psalms are like an iconistasis, a wall of icons in the Church. They are icons of our own history. Praying the Psalms offers a unique opportunity to contemplate the depth of history in which we live. They offer an insight into history's complex life; into our own interconnected lives.

Following the news of world- and local politics, it seems, they fixate us in a constant flux. The iconostasis of history, which we are privileged to contemplate through the Christian prayer, has a profound effect upon us. It restores our sense of history. We become capable of seeing unity into an otherwise dangerously fragmented realm. And this is a vital faculty in our mediatised, computerised "e-age". In The Times Henry Kissinger said that the problem with today's politicians is that they have lost the sense of history. Together with their world they respond to what happens on the web. The ageing politician insinuates that leaders and peoples have become too internet-dependent. They are captive of emotional responses. Indeed, in the lack of a proper distance from history (the present) there is no proper engagement with this nervous medium. Arriving back to our Psalm-icons, without a "third eye", there is no proper analysis. We can see the consequences of developing its synonim, genuine historical responsibility. When we are responsible for the depth of our analysis, gestures and words.

Psalms 115 and 116 are governed by one single theme, which underlies their words. Peace. "From the rising of the sun to its setting / let the name of the Lord be praised." (Psalm 113,3). This line is of prophetic value. This line is a judgement upon us today. When I pray, I can hear a voice inside, which the historical Psalmist, the Spirit of God shares with us. Look! There is no peace in your world! "From the  rising of the sun to its setting" we are called to face this lack. The archetype, the Source of this Peace, which could smooth the entangled ways of peoples and nations in their Laoconic wrestling, is there, however. It is always among us told in this equally prophetic line: "The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens" (Psalm113,4.) Indeed, we can call it a prophetic statement as we should no longer taken for granted the meaning of "God". Neither in the Roman Catholic Church, nor in the Church of England. God, to whom our doctrines and liturgies point, so to say, are "beyond" our Psalms. We have to re-learn to contemplate this source of Peace. "Who is like the Lord our God that has his throne so high, yet humbles himself to behold the things of heaven and earth?" (Psalm 113,5).

The closing Prayer of the Psalm in Common Worship is wise. It brings to completion our meditation. It illustrates what the "depth" of meditation, to which we are called to arrive at, means. Acquiring the sense of history in our "e-age" is most of all letting God's peace be manifested as compassionate seeing of the world. "From the rising of the sun to its setting we praise your name, O Lord; may your promise to raise the poor from the dust and turn the fortunes of the needy upside down be fulfilled in our time also, as it was in your On, Jesus Christ our Lord."

Psalm 115, the second part of the Morning Prayer, does not leave a rest for us. Now, with this call to see through the depth of compassion, the question is repeated. "Why should the nations say, 'Where is now their God'? Where is the Peace now to which we are called?"

I am leaving myself and you with this single, I believe, guiding question, on the threshold of the referendum on Scottish independence. There is a lot to contemplate in ourselves, till our motives in acting at this particular part of history become clear, and till we perceive fuller what the taken for granted words, "the Peace of God", mean.

11.09.2014

In Mixed Lands / For a backround of Psalms 102-103

Norman Adams, The Golden Crucifixion (1993)

I have not yet decided in which language to stay. Living abroad, option one is to lay myself down day by day into a language which makes me handicapped compared with what and how I can express in my native language. I am about to stay and speak and work in this second language. I am well aware of, with years of experience that I have, that living abroad can be painful and at stages is indeed painful. I do not know, will have to ask my friends who spent a lifetime here, if the originating centre of our consciousness can ever be forgotten. For someone like me whose primary medium of expression is language, it seems difficult. My instrument is language. That language, which like a faithful sea with its energy and riches, gives a continuous support to be interested in naming the new shores of my life. Language − Hungarian − prompts me to think and order the complex experiences of this world of constant expansion.

Tens of thousands have left Hungary and came to work in the United Kingdom. Sooner or later they will undergo the same initial birth-pangs of being born, however temporarily, into a new language. You cannot exist in your old identity here. It must undergo an expansion, a fermentation.

It would be interesting to know and share: is it indeed happening to all of us here that the mother culture inside starts a strange 'dying' in us. What normally would remain hidden, here, without words, without any conscious deliberation, starts echoing. All the classics of literature, our national thinkers, past generations embracing the identity of being a 'magyar' (Hungarian) − start whispering like will-o'-the-wisp (lidércfények). And all this whispering is underneath the present. (In a sense, Bartok's homesickness was similar and different. He has chosen the state of exile as a protest against Nazism. Yet, there was a constant yearning for return. He died from an unquenchable desire to be reborn in the mother culture and language he left behind. His leukaemia manifested this underlying pain of being cut off so dramatically from the centres from which his music developed from and wished to serve.)

I have been thinking a lot about this experience of becoming decentred. This experience is hardly named. Sporadically, I follow the programmes of the Hungarian Cultural Centre (Balassi Institute, London). They offer excellent events where the continuity with the mother culture can be cultivated. Yet, this new type of silence, the 'migrant's passion', even there remains unnamed.

It would be worth to develop a culture of sharing this specific experience. Being magyars in a global world − how does it feel? This is a specific knowledge. Not only of ourselves, not only of the host culture which offers hospitality. But first of all, this, potentially, is a very specific self-knowledge of us, as Hungary. There are two options. We came here, work here, earn money, passively, suffering all the pains of an economic migrant. At the end of which journey one usually returns to his or her country. I firmly believe that there is a second option. When identity is actively developed, and the old and the new identities, are integrated. This can be a time of cultural creation and of moral growth. When the consciousness of the migrant becomes an active cell of one's nation's cultural memory. Yes, it is possible, to become a specific, almost autonomous local culture, which can contribute to a redefinition of what a 'nation' is. Still we do knot know what this new voice can and will say. All I sense is, at the moment, that this identity should not be a passive one, which is either the victim of the pain of nostalgic yearning for 'home' or a submission to the economic coercions. Economic migrants will never attain the dignity of a 'free citizen'.

Thinking about what it means to be a Hungarian − surely will differ from the routinely reflections with which we are familiar at home. Perhaps, this is my expectation, the cultural canon may come alive an a new way. Perhaps, if I start writing this London Diary again, I will have to explore this positive direction.

*

Without this positive rethinking of one's identity, I fear that one can only be locked in a permanent mourning. Which is, a natural reaction of the psyche. I myself has been making attempts to overcome this wounding nostalgia. Pain must be named; think of the unredeemed pain of the exiled Kelemen Mikes of Zagon from Turkey. This pain is not a shame, it is a state, and also, a lack of a supportive fellowship who share your local experience of 'exile'. However, this pain (let us call it the pain of Bartok) is the very ground upon which a new reflective culture can be erected. There must be a point when pain does not speak any longer - but a joyful solidarity and renewed openness to existence. Of which significant fruit is the renewed openness to the 'sending culture' and all its dying forms (in us, at home, and here).

*

In the Book of Common Prayer, for the 20th day of the month Psalms 102 Domine, Exaudi and 103, Benedic, anima mea, are thematically arranged. They perfectly express the dynamic of 'mourning' of old, and being reborn in a new identity. This is a powerful honesty which describes both states. 'Hear my prayer, O Lord: and let my crying come onto thee. Hide not your face from me in the time of my trouble.' This is the story of our migrant self, the story of our exile. A beautiful world of pain, which, has produced many 'Hungarian divines', wounded thinkers of outstanding quality from Ady and Márai (ongoing line).

However, the world of Psalm 103, is our redemptive, cultural archetype. 'Praise the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me praise his holy name...Look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth: so great is his mercy also toward them that fear him. Look how wide also the east from the west: so far hath he set our sins from us.' Without this ascension to renewal there is no cultural creation. There is no home-coming. The Psalms, with their deep humanism, are indeed a guidance for our cultural condition − for that of our split and splitting presence. Psalm 103 confirms four us that, indeed, there is a 'new earth and new heaven', when our mother culture, through and in our fragile present, is being reborn.

*

It is also archetypal how Pilinszky lived the birth-pangs and passion of being a migrant of today. As if he was thinking in advance, anticipating, the wounds and missions of our postmodern fragmentation. His poetry − again an existential metaphor − is like Ikaros, staggering undecidedly between the worlds of psalms 102 and 103. A painful equilibrium, indeed. It is the task our generation to redeem his experience of exile expressed in the poem, On a Forbidden Star.

On a Forbidden Star

I was born on a forbidden star. From there

driven ashore, I trudge along the sand.

The surf of celestial nothingness takes me up,

and plays with me, then casts me on the land.

Why I repent I do not even know.

It is a puzzle buzzing in my ear.

If any of you should find me on this beach,

this sunken beach, don't run away, stay here.

And don't be scared. Don't run away. Just try

to mitigate the suffering in my life.

Shut your eyes and press me to yourself.

Press me boldly, as you would a knife.

Be reckless too: look on me as the dead

look on the night, seeing it s their own,

your shoulder there to aid my weaker one.

I can no longer bear to be alone.

I never wanted to be born. It was nothingness

Who bore and suckled me; with her I started.

So love me darkly. Love me cruelly. Love me

like the one left behind by the departed.

Translated from Hungarian by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri (In: Janos Pilinszky: Passio, Worple Press 2011)

Tilos csillag

Én tiltott csillagon születtem,

a partra űzve ballagok,

az égi semmi habja elkap,

játszik velem és visszadob.

Nem is tudom, miért vezeklek?

Itt minden szisszenő talány,

ne fusson el, ki lenn a parton,

e süppedt parton rámtalál.

S ne félj te sem, ne fuss előlem,

inkább csittítsd a szenvedést,

csukott szemmel szoríts magadhoz,

szorits merészen, mint a kést.

Légy vakmerő, itélj tiédnek,

mint holtak lenn az éjszakát,

vállad segítse gyenge vállam,

magam már nem birom tovább!

Én nem kivántam megszületni,

a semmi szült és szoptatott,

szeress sötéten és kegyetlen,

mint halottját az itthagyott.

20.19.2014, London, South Kensington.