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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

For the Methodical and for Muddlers

For the Methodical and for Muddlers

In the spiritual life, I have often suspected there are two kinds of people – no, not saints and sinners, but methodical people and muddlers. (As you may have guessed, I belong to the second group, with the postmen who cannot tell what month it is, and housewives who burn the roast.) Father Clynes’s bookpage 692 of short meditations should be of great use to methodical people. They will find a meditation for the morning and evening of each day in Lent, linked to the liturgy. The thoughts are appropriate, and obviously spring from a mind deeply grounded in the spirit of penance. The book is like a series of evenly graded steps to help one along the Road of the Cross. I would trip on each of them, because I am a muddler: but a methodical person would move onward and upward towards Calvary, by means of them, with a calm mind and a sense of order deeply satisfied.

For the awkward squad in particular, I must wholeheartedly recommend Michel Quoist’s book of prayers. For the best devotional reading, I think three elements are required: a conformity with Catholic truth, a connection with the everyday experience of believers, and the kind of freshness and depth that belong to a mind and heart open to the influence of the Holy Spirit. These three elements combine most fortunately in Michel Quoist’s book –

. . . I went out, Lord.
Men were coming out,
They were coming and going,
Walking and running.
Everything was rushing, cars, lorries, the street, the whole town.
Men were rushing not to waste time.
They were rushing after time,
To catch up with time,
To gain time . . .
You who are beyond time, Lord, you smile to see us fighting it.
And you know what you are doing.
You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men.
You give each one time to do what you want him to do . . .

These prayers should rather be called meditations. They have the effect of a diffused and primitive poetry. I cannot imagine that anyone, despite the author’s expressed intention, would use them as personal prayers; but I can well imagine that many readers will find their spiritual life jarred, jolted, refreshed and enriched by them. They spring from many circumstances of daily life – the care of children, the use of trains and telephones, a funeral, a separated marriage, hunger, housing, a hospital visit, a drunk man in the street, a bald head at a lecture, a game of football, and the various interior states of peace, conflict and dereliction which are part of a life given to the charge of Jesus.

The chief truth which the author urges by many anecdotes is that the best (and often the only) way to love God is to love one’s immediate and distant neighbours with a burning, practical, patient and sacrificial love. He points out that this may well mean the loss of one’s somewhat selfish peace of mind;page 693 and so much the better, since the Cross is planted in the marketplace. Though the author has hidden his identity well, I am inclined to think he is a priest in charge of young people. One touching and delicate meditation on the human loneliness of a priest seen from the inside makes this seem likely.

It is a book to be read, a book to be lived, and a book to be loved.

1965 (335)