The Christian Catalyst Collection | Malcolm Muggeridge

[Music] when one's nearing the end of a life as I am my allotted span of threescore years and ten II already well past her white and disappearing breath short eyes dim grunting coughing groaning with many other intimations of mortality flesh mind and spirit it's natural enough to be thinking about death particularly here in this graveyard where my father lies buried with a space beside him which I expect to be occupying quite soon now dust to dust is the burial service and the Book of Common Prayer puts it or in my case as I sometimes wonder will the end be signalized by a celestial voice on high proclaiming the single word from my earliest years I've been much Gilland of thinking about death some would sink abnormally or even morbidly first is an infinitely remote - mysterious prospect then as the years passed as something at an actual happening which must in due course before me and now near at hand sooner that it quite cancels out all the plans and expectations and hopes relating to this world that have occupied my mind as dr. Johnson said of the man expecting to be hanged the prospect of death wonderfully concentrates the mind this might seem in contemporary terms a melon cliff not unmentionable case to be in death having your place sex as the great taboo the dirty little secret i on the contrary find it very uplifting like the close of a June day a distillation as it were of everything most beautiful and most loving in what's gone before a beginning not an end the darkness falling and in the sky the distant glow the lights or gustin's city of God looking towards them I save it myself John dan splendid words death thou shalt die here in the graveyard the dust settles there in the City of God eternity begins [Music] oh that their shirts give dust a tongue to cry to thee so writes George Herbert a door of utterance for dust words that have a beginning in an end addressed to what never began and can tend impossible yet the passion to speak persists like seeing someone off in a train and when the Train begins to move rushing along with it to get in one last word after all for more than half a century I've been a communicator or send Augustine calls of end all words of the habit remains words tapped out on a typewriter or teleprinter shouted down a telephone mouths from a platform scribbled by hand spoken into a microphone recorded on tape or video words words words millions and millions of them particles of spray momentarily caught in the sunlight and then falling back in the ocean whence they came sonorous leading articles trivial gossip paragraphs pompous obituaries news stories from our special correspondent here they're everywhere exhortation speculation every variety of composition a positive my Agra of words frothing and churning on a tumultuous course when I look back on my life nowadays which I sometimes do what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive now seems the most absurd and futile I mean for instance success in all its different guises being now being praised then pleasures or sensible pleasures like crying money or seducing women or traveling going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like singing exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has on offer in retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seemed pure of fantasy or Pascal called licking the earth diversion was designed to distract our attention from the true purpose of existing in this world which is quite simply to look for God and find him and having found him to love him thereby establishing a harmonious relationship with his purposes for his creation on the other hand I look back on experiences which at the time seemed particularly desolating and painful with particular satisfaction indeed I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I've learned in my 75 years in this world that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through friction and not through happiness whether pursued or attained in other words if it ever were to be possible to eliminate a friction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo as Aldous Huxley in visitors in brave new world the result would not be to make that delectable but to make it too banal and trivial to be enjoyable this of course is what the cross signifies and it's the cross more than anything else that has called me inexorably to Christ such as face springing up out of the immortal seed of love and ever budding forth in new blossoms and maturing maturing new fruit existing indeed in feelings but passing on into X into victories of whatever kind over self being the power of the will over the whole soul for Christ's sake constraining the reason to accept mysteries the heart to acquiesce in suffering the hand to work the feet to run the voice to bear witness as the case may be these acts we sometimes call Labour's sometimes Endurance's sometimes confessions sometimes devotions sometimes services but they are all instances of self-command arising from faith seeing the invisible world and love choosing it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's often said that old age is a sort of second childhood and it's true in a way one does go back to childhood I find for instance I remember things that happened when I was a child much more clearly and vividly and things that happened more recently more often than not yesterday is totally obliterated but I can recall exactly happenings as long as 50 or 60 years ago it's the same as places I mean natural scenes like this filled with sheep in the orchard and sky it's again like a child's reaction as though I was seeing it for the first time although in fact it's a place I come to almost every day the reaction is is sharp like like a child's reaction and then with people to everyone as with a child is a sort of relation all uncles and aunts brothers and sisters belong to one family and so to be trusted to be loved to be confided in so when people see this second childhood as an intimation of senescence I don't agree I'm one kind to think of it as a a conditioning process for eternity there's giving one used to the circumstances the one's going to move into and furthermore has bearing out those sayings of Jesus about how we have to be like a little child to understand his words and to enter his kingdom there's another thing that happens to me nowadays quite often it sounds rather strange but actually is enormous the delightful and that is that I have a sense of being half in and half out of my body as though it was almost a toss-up whether I went back and resumed my life or made off and left my betturtle caucus behind me forever and in that curious state in a sort of limbo between time and eternity there are two convictions that I have two very strong convictions the first is of the incredible beauty of our earth and of human beings the colors and shapes and smells and sounds of the earth and human love the delight of human work human procreation the continuance of life from generation to generation all this these things seem absolutely wonderful and beautiful and then the second impression stronger than I can possibly convey is that as an infinitesimal particle of life I'm a participant in our creator's purposes for his creation and those purposes are loving and not malign creative and not destructive Universal and not particular and in that feeling in that conviction a very great comfort and a very great joy course in such a state of mind one looks back on one's life and all the worldly pursuits that it's involved with a sort of distaste is that it was all worthless wasted time on the other hand I must admit that the profession of journalism which I practiced for the last half century and more has it in it one very great advantage that is it gives one a very sharp sense indeed of the sheer buffoonery of power of those who seek it [Music] [Music] without a God men have to be gods themselves and fabricate their own immortality as here in wax in Madame Tussauds exhibition a place of images in the beginning was the image and the image became wax and dwelt among us full of absurdity images of the famous and infamous dead are the celebrated and notorious living above all of the gods and goddesses of the media these images of images programmed to speak and just tickle ate in accordance with their preordained Road even come to net an image of myself from time to time I've had a bizarre notion but I might change places with my image spend a few quiet days here in Baker Street and leave him to do the various things that I've gotta do to sit at my typewriter and grind out words to hear the cry action and respond to it and then relax when he hears cut or again that when the Toastmasters prayed silence then your grace your Excellencies my Lords ladies and gentlemen [Music] I like very much a notion of Pascal's that those in authority need to dress up in order to justify their eminence if judges didn't wear ermine Pascal says who could possibly suppose that they were capable of dispensing true justice in the same sort of way priests in their vestments scholars in their gowns Admirals in their gold braid generals with their red tabs kings and queens without crowns and their orbs and chefs with that tall white hats in the same sort of way clowns have to paint their faces in order that people may know they're being funny in other words Authority requires an image men in relation to power become images it's only in their relation to God that they dare to be men here they all are the captains and the Kings the great ones that add ban flow the moon all in wax kings and queens presidents and politicians soldiers and sailors pontiff's and ideologues all waxworks with their names written on water or what amounts to the same thing today written on a television screen all stars in an interminable soap opera called history I've always had the feeling from my very earliest memories that somehow somewhere there was another dimension of reality where the fancy dress was put aside the grease paint was washed off the arc lamps were lured even as a child if I hadn't to catch a glimpse of a local mare in his regalia or a local vicar in his it filled me with a kind of wonder as it might be looking incredulously and a father Christmas in a cotton wool beard I feel as though all my life I've been looking for an alternative scene for the flesh beneath the wax for light beyond the arc lights for time beyond the king of the clocks for a Vista reaching far beyond the farthest reach of mortal eyes even when magnified to thousands of light years for a destiny beyond history how extraordinary that I should have found it not in flying up to the Sun like Icarus but in God coming down to me in the Incarnation a seeker after reality which means God is bound sooner or later to be drawn to the Sea of Galilee the scene of the Incarnation whereby God leant down to become a man Jesus of Nazareth in order that men might reach up and relate themselves to him their creator or in the sublime imagery of the fourth gospel whereby the word became flesh to dwell among us full of grace and truth it's been my good fortune to come here on numerous occasions in the way of my profession of communicator this is almost certainly the last time so I survey the scene with particular intensity trying to store it in my mind as it might be studying a beloved face never to be seen again who can fail to be uplifted by it others shrines and places of pilgrimage allowable to be fabricated and are frequently vulgarized but this one is somehow in violent these are veritably the hills Jesus saw when he lifted up his eyes this is the sea which provided his first disciples with their livelihood as fishermen and which he often crossed at times to avoid being in King Herod's jurisdiction the same winds blows in his time the Sun rises and sets in the same places in the surrounding countryside many of his magical words were uttered and the sick and the disabled gathered in the hope of benefiting from his healing hand it was from here that he took the road to Jerusalem there to fulfill his inescapable destiny the crucifixion and the resurrection that followed let me them has one more poor pilgrim who's found his way belatedly to Galilee a true child of his time with a skeptical mind and a sensual disposition heed my testimony to that of the millions upon millions of others during the last twenty centuries I say them but the words Jesus spoke and the revelation he proclaimed were true when he spoke them are true now and will be true forever moreover those who care to heed them may find a release from the fantasy of power which is the world into the reality of love which is the kingdom not of this world that Jesus proclaimed heaven and earth shall pass away he said to his disciples but my words shall not pass away we have them still our most precious heritage here and now for those who care to live by and in them while still living in our earthly City they can prepare themselves for the citizenship of the City of God which lies before them [Music] likewise the promises Jesus made are still valid and will continue so forever particularly his promise that he wouldn't disappear from the world after his death but continue to be accessible to those who sought him lo I am with you always he said to his disciples even to the end of the world so it follows that in the afflictions of this world no one need ever lack a comforter in the hardships of this world no one need ever lack a helper in the stumbling from losing one's way which are inevitable in this way no one need ever let an armed leader a guide to show the way [Music] it's still something else something looks searching my heart I find it very difficult to express in words except the everlasting truth Jesus revelation except the everlasting validity of the promises he made it's still for something else an extraordinary illumination that comes flooding in or must be an extraordinary awareness a quite exceptional poignancy force a knowledge past me I hope past hope you call it faith which swallows up all the little intricacies of doubt and actual feet call it being reborn a new creature arising out of the grub innocent dust of worldly living like a butterfly out of its chrysalis whatever it may be called detained a pass here in Galilee a new dimension to our mortal existence a new freedom not for a tiny elite not based on propositions and institutions but burgeoning in each human heart and only leading to be allowed to grow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] after his baptism in the waters of the River Jordan by John the Baptist our Lord made for the wilderness probably this very one lying between Jerusalem and Jericho the Apostle Paul did the same thing after his Damascus Road experience so have countless others from Hermits subsisting in remote and inaccessible caves many such in this neighborhood to troubled souls to be seen in the early morning walking in city parks and beside ornamental waters before the day's noises and movements have begun what the wilderness offers is its emptiness and barrenness and silence as here not a tree or a street not a building or a telegraph or the road or of the oculina side nothing to suggest human habitation apart from an occasional flock of skinny sheep and goats or vultures flying through the sky so in the wilderness the world seems far away no social life no media no occasion for bitterness or frustration just an arid Haven of Refuge a dusty paradise no votes to cast women to seduce managed to accumulate celebrity to acquire all the habitual pursuits of the Egger and the appetites suspended I love it because when all these pursuits of mind and body have been shed what remains is in so far this is attainable in our mortal condition and unencumbered soul with no other concern than to look for God and looking is finding and finding one may dare to hope is keeping this is what sin francis of assisi meant when he spoke of being naked on the naked earth this is the most sublime state a human being can aspire to being in the wilderness alone with God from such an encounter with God what emerges that we are indeed made in His image and that there are fallen creatures and inheritors of Adam's curse we yet may aspire to participate in his purposes what they are we know not what they pretend we cannot imagine nevertheless knowing God brings with it the requisite faith to surrender wholly to his purposes then at last we can pray really meaning it fully accepting its implications that line in the Lord's Prayer thy will be done that is all there is to say to God then at any time so this wilderness is suddenly full of joy now it does very to be blossom like a rose in the confident knowledge that nothing can before us to our ultimate hurt other than to become separated from God all other ills in this transitory and like clouds melting away in the sun's glow come to be incorporated in the radiance of God's Universal love nor need we belabor the skies with cries to him since we have at hand a mediator in one who also came to this wilderness the living Christ [Music]

Channel: Vision Video

Views: 1,937

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Videos, Christian Films, Christian Movies, Religious Movies, Films, Movies, Entertainment, Malcolm Muggeridge, The Christian Catalyst Collection, Religion, Documentary, Christianity, Holy Land, TV SHow, TV Series, The Christian Catalyst Collection | Malcolm Muggeridge, Jeremy Murray-Brown, The Holy Land, religion, religious, Christian film, full movie, full film, Madame Tussad's Wax Museum, Madame Tussad, deep questions, religious quest

Id: LoA-KKmg5Lo

Length: 42min 57sec (2577 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020