Please let Your wonderful mother be with us at the prayer group. I need all her help to keep up devotion to this loving weapon, the most Holy Rosary.
Also, Jesus, I want You to provide a team of people who will be prepared to come to You ever more closely and open up their all to receive and radiate Your light to others who need it.
Please let us set this in motion quickly. So many need help dear Jesus, and protect this house with the cloak of Your mystery and prepare and consolidate those who You want to join You in this work.
It is so important for You to implant all Your thoughts on my heart, our heart, and please give me the courage and strength to walk the waters with each person we pray for. You assured me in that beautiful dream Lord that I had.
Now You tell me to do it for, and with, all those who are frightened. Since You had guided me, I know they will follow, if I stay with You.
Please, Jesus, I yearn to bring hundreds of thousands to You. Please let it be so I know You want me to. Ursula, You, the child and I, what a team we are Jesus. Bless You Jesus, son of God.
Many thanks Jesus, for opening up this new door. I have thought about teaching for many years, yet this business of a certificate kept me away. What a great blessing learning is, Jesus.
I have spent the better part of my life marvelling at the gems of information one can pick up from those who act as though you do not exist. In your mercy however, you gift everyone of us to a degree. Yet your secrets you reveal only to those who love you and you alone. Earthly and spiritual vanity are so closely intermingled, that only those who aspire to be like you, Holy, can ever draw from the well of life which is You in Us.
You even put to good use, those caught up in spiritual pride who are trapped by signs and wonders. They seem to forget that your Heart yearns for man in all his humanity, yet you reach them at the point at which they are prepared to meet you. You, Jesus, are no respecter of definitions. You consider the supposedly ignorant, deceitful, cheats, blasphemers as your potential friends, speaking to them in a language that will melt their hearts and allow them to yield graciously to your love in them and for them. How great thou art, dear Lord.
Dear little mother, you are so gentle. Your son, David, loves you greatly.
The way we recite your prayers, given by the Holy Spirit, allows all of us to reach out to you in that prayer from our Heavenly Father. This prayer, this salutation, recognises your role as mediatrix and co redemptorist with Jesus, your son, who treated you in the fullness of motherhood and completed your role in His abandonment to the Will of the Father.
Mary holding the child Jesus
Your grief, dear little mother, apart from what one expects, was caught up in your son’s grief at not being recognised as being One with the Father. That man, caught up in darkness, was not acknowledging his heritage through the giving of your son at the request of the Father. What a beautiful union of sacrifice which in no way diminishes but simply is.
Dear mother, you too were yielding to this supreme love act and we all love you for it.
Even though we are hindered by our pettiness from doing so, we acknowledge you as Queen of Heaven, Queen of the angels and our great intercessor always in union with your son Jesus the greatest of all lovers, one with the Father and Holy Spirit for all time. Praise God.
Dear Lord Jesus, one comes to the Father through You. It is the Father who is always giving, caring, looking after us yet we are commanded to approach Him through You.
This often impresses me as it is such a regal and courteous gesture. We approach the King of the Heavens through Jesus in Us. So in one sense Jesus, always when we think we are moving it is You moving in Us towards the Fatherhood of Almighty God. The Spirit activating and prompting Perpetual Trinity moving in Trinity to Trinity.
All of us, more closely caught up in Heavenly places than we dare realise for fear of being overawed by the magnitude of Your supreme response to your creation.
Dear Jesus, so many distractions, so many thoughts, but thank you for always staying with me regardless.
The past six weeks have been amazing Jesus. Really You are here. I often wonder what would happen to our marriage were it not for You.
Dear Ursula, Eternal Father, how well you have brought her into your place of light Jesus. Gone are those days of tortuous deliberating of profundity gathered from books. It is so much more to the point to be with You, Jesus, simply in all our every-day functions.
Harvest
You promised to help us make a painting out of the house Jesus, and I can see You are at work. We manage to find all we need at no great cost and always you direct me to the place selling them. Jesus, it is good to have you in every aspect of our life. You are very much part of our marriage.
Sometimes I think of You being alongside us as we walk along the beautiful towpath. What a joy to see the magnificence of your gifts. Everything there to create colour and joy.
What a generous lover you are Lord. Reminds me of the gallant who goes to see his lady love with a bunch of flowers. With You Lord, it was the gift of mother earth in all its amazing robes of intricate, splendid colour. You must have known moments of staleness, Jesus. Or were You so caught up in a reality which evades us that your being was permanently in a state of growth that is fusing eternally?
I listen to some of our friends, Jesus, talking about Your humanity and Your temptations and get the impression that they have convinced themselves that they fully realise your humanity. Does anyone know what it is to be a real man? Was there ever a man with such an ability to merge humanity and divinity as you Jesus? Certainly not! You are our aspiration, our hope, our glimmer of You is a mere ripple in a vast ocean of love.
Thank you Jesus, thank you for all our hope in You. If in any way we realised Your nearness
The cross, dear Lord, has to be carried and always we are so busy convincing ourselves of all the valid excuses for delaying Your call.
Where can we hide? Not from that deep inner voice, eternally obedient to Your Will, feeling the need to respond to Your summons to move on. Jesus, you who understand our fears and doubts, must surely appreciate the fragility and exquisite bond which soothingly draws us to giving ourselves completely to Your love.
Your eternal plan Lord, so mysteriously divine in all its seemingly interweaving complexities.
Our hearts and minds yearningly grope for this freedom which has its existence in our being and yet somewhere we have lost ourselves to the symbolism of bird and cage.
How refreshing, Jesus, to continually remind oneself that you too had all the longing to be eternally productive and yet must have sensed the inner rebellion of flesh, suggesting a more perfect course thoroughly caught up in the Father’s infinite goodness.
A hesitation Jesus, a moment’s fatigue, all so infinitely precious to the father, all abandoned to His Will. Lord, even exhaustion must express itself and realize the newness of the moment by its presence.
We cannot escape from sensing these human aspects of our being yet we must recognise that in rejoicing in them, we satisfy the fullness of the need of the moment. We cannot endlessly try to escape the beauty of Your presence in Our sufferings Jesus.
Each moment is the eternal blossoming of some preciousness so rare that to try to escape is to tear ourselves away from Your fashioning hands.
How You must gaze tenderly on this masterpiece of life Father and yearn that Your children be still and allow You to rule. You Father, the king of all time, the giver of all good thought and expression, permanently hindered and recreating in the basic panic – bursting of the dam of Your gracious giving. A thought Lord, which leaves me startled and amazed by its very reality.
I was wondering about the many moments of time I have spent just being alone with You, incapable of even thinking coherently. Many a time one has been caught up in a feeling of utter desolation and meaninglessness and I have often wanted to put into words exactly what I was then doing.
It is very simple. I was sharing my suffering with You Lord. More often I have nothing else to offer You, yet even the act of giving that to you Lord, has a sweetness and gentleness of its own.
We can only know the answer to the moment as You reveal it and how You replace suffering with joy, received from the giving of it.
Thank you Jesus, I beg you Lord to love me, as I know You do, but please bear with me the many mistakes I make – my inability to be holy.
Image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Somehow I feel in Your heart You must have a place for the unorthodox Davids of this world. I cannot ever see myself as the fine example some of your dear friends have been but please Lord, worthless as I am, take the hypocrite, the coward and the cheat and breathe Your own brand of transforming love since I know not what I should be like and wish only to be what You would have me be.
Lord, even if that is lacking in honesty, transform me and let me be pleasing to Your Spirit Jesus. I am what I am and even that, only You really understand since the state of being can only be perfected in You.
Grasp me and hold me. Touch me and love me Lord. I am weak and cannot cope but I will move on, never looking back.
Let my heart sing a new song. Let it blend in the Song of Love, the song You first sang Father, the life you gave us.
These thoughts and meditative prayers were recorded from 1974 till about 1977
During this time we were expecting the birth of our first child and there was a Charismastic / Padre Pio prayer group meeting in our house each week. This writing has been typed out from the handwritten pages David laid down in a book which we have kept during all our journeys over the past 45 years.
INTRO – 1974
Jesus, thank you that you are you, ever loving, ever fulfilled, ever one with the Father and Holy Spirit.
Thank you Jesus for creating the desire within me that I become like you.
Ursula and I thank you for You in us. Jesus stay with us, we have opened our doors to you. Walk in and be at home.
Bless you for the child may he/she grow in playfulness with the Child Jesus.
Dear Lord Jesus Christ, Here we are, just You and I. We are alone Lord so let us pour out our hearts to each other.
Walking with the Lord
Good Jesus, my mind is permanently thinking about You and how You would cope with the situations I am plunged into.
Dear Lord, sometimes I am terrified by the challenges You put before me. I know You are urging me on, prompting me gently to come closer to You who are closeness itself. Does it matter to You much where I am Lord? You who look so gently upon me, urging me to refresh myself in the healing silence of Your loving gaze. It is so difficult, my friend Jesus, You accepted Your chalice and redeemed me.
It is Your love which carries me on its wings. Yet I have to look to seek, to knock, to find. I cannot always wait Lord. Like good friends, we must work together You and I.
I want to participate Lord in Your Holy will. Often times I am held back knowing it is You who lives in me.
Dear Jesus, however incredible the fact of You in me, I believe it. So who am I? Am I You and I? In which case, Jesus, we move on – us two.
Lord, do I see You everywhere? I must believe You live in all men. The amazing awareness of running into You Lord, everywhere I go, is far too great for me to comprehend. Where do You lodge Jesus, when You are with those who blaspheme, the arrogant, those who think they know so much. You, whose love eradicates pain. Where do You stay?
Dear Jesus, may I protect You from Your enemies? But it is us, not me, never me now Lord, You and I. What a beautiful refreshing thought Jesus. Which one of us speaks?
Dear Jesus, You sent Your Holy Spirit, one with You and the Father. Lord, I daren’t think further; on my own? Where are we Jesus? Where does this union start and stop? Lord is the suggestion correct? Am I caught up by Your Grace in this oneness? If this is so Jesus and since neither You nor I want to leave Us, when do we part, if ever?
Jesus, the pain of this awareness is too much. What next? Where to? Dear Jesus, it is so good to be as You are.
Thank You, thank You and thank You again sweet Jesus. How consoling it is for us to talk to each other through the medium of paper. Do I ever cease to be David in being with You Lord? This morning David eat my flesh and blood. Can this be so, Jesus? Can You speak through me in all reality of You in me and me in You? We can converse for ever more and people may, when they meet David, meet Jesus. Nothing, or everything, to do with David Jesus. What a wonderful thought! Why don’t all who love You and know You in the Eucharist acknowledge they are really Michael Jesus and Ursula Jesus.
Excerpt from the autobiographical book “The Long Arm of the Lord” by David West Part 1/23
Now back in London, I was still struggling with my new found faith so I asked the Lord to surround me with saintly people to share my thoughts with and to give me strength and encouragement.
Lalage, my good friend, took me to Denton, a tiny little village near Oxford. This was a meeting place for a new type of prayer group. It was held in the garden room of a private house a lovely annex, surrounded by shrubs and flowers. Joan led us in prayer and people of all ages and different denominations, turned up from near and far.This little room of worship often held as many as twenty people, all praising God in tongues, giving witness and testifying to God’s grace. They had one common objective which was to bring as many people as possible into His light.
I had spent a few evenings in the company of these Christians and had really come to sense a oneness even though doctrinally there were some points on which we were not all in agreement. However, love, concern and understanding seemed to put this very much into the background and a desire to put Christ before everything else held us all in a common purpose.Even though many had personal problems and were going through difficult times, an overriding sense of joy in the Risen Christ prevailed as each of us shared in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
A great sense of Christ’s presence quite overwhelmed me yet references to Jacob and Esau had caused a sense of grief.I recognised the commitment of this group and felt acutely the pain of my struggle to stay with Christ. How often had I looked back in the past; fallen back into my old ways.Temptation walked alongside me and my path was never very steady.The hedonistic streak within me made me very conscious of the things I was missing out on, yet Christ seemed to have taken me by the hand. I was always being dragged on.I felt that my will was like a piece of putty and I never knew whether I was responding to my own will or whether Christ had really taken over more than I dreamed possible.
This feeling stayed with me when I reached London where I lived.The next day was a grey humid day.London was deserted as, if I remember rightly, it was around Easter and many had gone away for a few days of celebration – what sort of celebration remains dubious as Christianity seemed to have gone out of the heart of most people in that city.
I walked down South Kensington onto a bridge to Battersea, where I spent time with some dear friends of mine who were amused but not disparaging about my new found beliefs.In fact I shared my experiences with them and they seemed ready to accept most as being authentic.
I left them and was on my way back to my flat, walking across Battersea Bridge. As I crossed the bridge I sensed the deceitfulness of my life and a feeling of sadness enveloped me. But, far from demoralising me, on the contrary it helped me to see myself as I was, warts and all and a deep acceptance of myself took place.
Without realising it, I had been kicking about a piece of crumpled paper. It looked like a dirty piece of cardboard. I was trying to work out how God could possibly accept me and forgive me when I was finding it so difficult to be faithful.Something inside me said, ‘pick it up!’ I immediately stretched down and reached for this messy piece of crumpled cardboard and unfolded it.I could hardly believe what I saw.It was a beautifully illuminated text such as you find in very old manuscripts. It contained a scriptural message which read “He that cometh to Me in no wise will I cast out’.
Joy welled up within me, it was another little proof in my mind that God was up there watching us all.I was utterly overwhelmed by a sense of God’s goodness and walked on with a steadier step, more than ever convinced that God really cares.
