An Experiment with Light

One of the most powerful aspects of working with the ‘Experiment with Light’ was the experience of knowing in a group when we were hearing truth. This tallied exactly with my own experiences of authentic ritual and of ministry in a truly gathered meeting. There was a quality of depth to it, an authority that simply could not be argued with... And what was extraordinary to me (as a modern individual) was that in seeking truth in this way, the truth discovered was not an individual thing. Truth revealed in this way is not ‘my truth', which, once sensed within me I must assert against or above the truth others discover within; the truth I connect with when I truly surrender will lead me, if I am obedient to it, into unity with others - an experience central to Quakers from the earliest times. It is as if, like fragments of a hologram, we are all aspects of one whole and in the stillness of what we call Quaker worship we can get beneath our ego separations and be reminded of this greater pattern, whatever name we give to it. To live in the Light is to be open to this awareness and seek to be obedient to its guidance at all times.

From working with this process, I learnt that when I am supported (and challenged) to live in this more open way, I do not need to turn to others to be told what to do, I do not need to inhibit my deepest convictions, nor do I need to cling to structures – whether schedules or codified principles of behaviour – to guide me; the whole of my life becomes an experiment in obedience and discernment. Truth is then neither a philosophical notion nor a matter of ethical principles – even ones as worthy as Quaker testimonies. Such codifying of behaviour is actually the very opposite of the experience to which Quakerism points us, which is obedience to something alive and dependable within, a source of revelation available to all beyond any system of religious belief. This is surely what Penn meant by the 'one religion' of the poor and humble, just and meek (QPF, 19.28) – this was not prescriptive, how we should live, but descriptive, how we will live when we are 'dwelling in the light'.

Alex Wildwood, A Faith to Call our Own

One of the things that has simultaneously shocked and delighted me since becoming a Quaker attender in December last year has been just this awareness of the experiential – experimental – nature of faith when lived rather than professed, or assented to. Don't get me wrong – witness is as important as ever, maybe under certain circumstances more important than ever – but it is a witness to simple experience, rather than an act of witnessing to a system of belief, or a set of creedal statements.

This is not to say that beliefs are unimportant; Quakers see belief as so important that nothing second-hand will do. The authority for what one accepts is known within, and is not accepted from anyone else, whatever their status. The Quaker emphasis is on a shared search for truth, and a working out of faith within a challenging but supportive group. At its best, a meeting may include people whose theological views are mutually incompatible at many points, but who nevertheless work and worship together without any disharmony. (Lewes Quakers)

The title of this post is taken from a Quaker spiritual practice, but the insight it represents is of course hardly unique to Quakers – though the radical conclusion drawn may be! Richard Rohr wrote:

God's revelations are always pointed, concrete, and specific. They are not a Platonic world of ideas and theories about which you can be right or wrong, or observe from a distance. Divine Revelation is not something you measure or critique. It is not an ideology but a Presence you intuit and meet! It is more Someone than something.

All of this is called the “mystery of incarnation” - enfleshment or embodiment if you prefer – and for Christians it reaches its fullness in the incarnation of God in one ordinary-looking man named Jesus. God materialized in human form, so we could fall in love with a real person, which is the only way we fall in love at all. Walter Brueggemann called this clear Biblical pattern “the scandal of the particular.” We first get the truth in one specific ordinary place and moment (like the one man Jesus), and then we universalize from that to the universal truth (the cosmic Christ). Our Franciscan philosopher, John Duns Scotus, called this the principle of “thisness” (haecceity or haecceitas in Latin). We can only know in focused moments what is always and everywhere true.

Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 17

It seems ironical, doesn't it, that I am writing about not needing support from external authorities for what God shows me directly, while quoting extensively from my own reading? It's important, though, to understand that what I am saying here is a shared thing, and that I am in the company of f/Friends!

I have all my life tended to doubt myself, doubt my own insights, and to seek for that external authority for my own insights, and yet here I am confronted with an experience which I cannot even myself gainsay. Outside the Meeting, it seems to go on, this sense of being part of something (Wildwood's 'hologram') far greater than myself, and which joins me to so many others across time and space, even though we are in no human contact.

There is an old Quaker expression, “living adventurously.” Truly, Susan and I seem to be caught up in just that...

A blessing of St Clare of Assisi

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he show his face to you and be merciful to you. May he turn his countenance to you, my sisters, and daughters, and give peace to you, and to all the others who come and remain in your company as well as to others now and in the future, who have persevered in every other monastery of the Poor Ladies.

I, Clare, a servant of Christ, a little plant of our most holy Father Francis, a sister and mother of you and the other poor sisters, although unworthy, beg our Lord Jesus Christ through his mercy and the intercession of his most holy Mother Mary and blessed Michael the Archangel and all the holy angels of God, of our blessed Father Francis, and all men and women saints, that the heavenly Father give you and confirm for you this most holy blessing in heaven and on earth. On earth, may he multiply you in his grace and his virtues among his servants and handmaids in his Church Militant. In heaven, may he exalt you and glorify you among his men and women saints in his Church Triumphant.

I bless you during my life and after my death, as I am able, out of all the blessings with which the Father of mercies has and does bless his sons and daughters in heaven and on earth and a spiritual father and mother have blessed and bless their spiritual sons and daughters. Amen.

Always be lovers of your souls and those of all your sisters. And may you always be eager to observe what you have promised the Lord.

May the Lord always be with you and may you always be with him. Amen.

The Testament of St Clare

Brokenness shared…

Suffering is the necessary deep feeling of the human situation. If we don’t feel pain, suffering, human failure, and weakness, we stand antiseptically apart from it, and remain numb and small. We can’t understand such things by thinking about them. The superficiality of much of our world is that it tries to buy its way out of the ordinary limits and pain of being human. Carl Jung called it “necessary suffering,” and I think he was right.

Jesus did not numb himself or withhold himself from human pain, as we see even in his refusal of the numbing wine on the cross (Matthew 27:34). Some forms of suffering are necessary so that we know the human dilemma, so that we can even name our shadow self and confront it.

Brothers and sisters, the irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the immense pain of this global humanity. Then we are no longer isolated, but a true member of the universal Body of Christ. Then we know God not from the outside but from the inside!

Richard Rohr, adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations 

I think Rohr has put his finger, here, on what I continually try to say here in this blog: that God has a terrible, redemptive purpose in allowing us to feel, especially others’, pain. (I would extend his “global humanity” though, to all that is made, really, and that shares in our brokenness since the Fall.) He does not intend so much to heal us by “making it all better”—he thinks more of us than that. As far as I can understand, what he is after is involving us in the great work of making all things new—as Paul writes to the Romans (8.18-27 NRSV):

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

For me, this comes about in and through the Jesus Prayer, since in and through the Prayer I find myself drawn deeper into God’s heart for the little, broken ones, without having to mess things up too much with my own thoughts and preconceptions. I wrote quite a long post about this during Lent 4 years ago. In some ways perhaps I have grown deeper into this odd way of life; in others, I find myself no farther forward, and still as puzzled…

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

Temptations...

If you struggle in temptation and fight against sin because you are in love with an idea you have of yourself as a holy soul or a religious person, you might succeed for a little while, but sooner than later you will fail and fall into sin. And this, in fact, is God's mercy, for you are only flattering the flesh.

If you struggle in temptation and fight against sin because you believe in goodness or morality or the sovereignty of God or because of your duty to observe the state of life you have chosen for yourself, you might succeed for a time, but eventually you will also fail.

But if you don't fight temptation at all, but instead rejoice to find yourself in temptations because you realize that in them God has found you worthy of embracing Christ crucified and sharing in his sufferings, and that this suffering is the resetting of the dingy sack of broken bones that is your mortal nature deformed and miserable in the effects of original sin--a procedure for which there is no anaesthesia—then you have found the remedy for sin and the path from death to life.

Brother Charles

I think this is one of the clearest and most striking explanations of the nature of our struggle with temptation I've ever seen. I don't know why, this Lent, I keep finding myself thinking so much about the redemptive aspects of suffering, but that's just what the Spirit seems to be doing with me...

It seems to me that we often don’t realise that temptation, too, is a way of sharing in Christ's sufferings, since he was tempted (Hebrews 4.15) exactly as we are ourselves. Perhaps this is a way in which we can draw very close to our Lord, as Paul said, “For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1.5)

We usually think of physical suffering when we read Peter’s famous exhortation, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4.12-13) Indeed the next few verses seems to imply that that is what Peter had in mind, but the principle applies to moral and emotional suffering just as much...

Once again, I’m amazed at how the Jesus Prayer adapts itself (or we adapt to it?) in these circumstances. I can’t imagine a prayer better suited to being prayed in the grip of this kind of temptation. And if we pray it imagining that we are “a holy soul or a religious person” as Br Charles says, then we will fall, in the mercy of Christ. I know. I’ve been there, more than once!

The Prayer for me is the clearest refuge, the best comfort I know. It is always there because Christ is always there by the power of his Spirit. His steadfast love never fails.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner...

The long haul…

The movement between community and solitariness is woven into the fabric of who we are in Christ. We come individually and make our response to the Word, who invites us to become a new creation and to live in divine intimacy. We nurture our life in Christ as the personal conversation continues and as we gradually learn to do less of the talking and begin to listen. But because our faith commitment joins us to other pilgrims on the way, we are challenged to live the new life together. We become part of that continuing community of God's people who exhibit a willingness to listen to one another.

Elizabeth Canham, Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom for Today

“Lent is a time for turning back if we have wavered, taking the risk of trusting God, and keeping going for the long haul,” as Canon Rosalind Brown writes in this week’s Church Times.

One of the things that moves me most about the Benedictine way of life is their concept of “stability”. Those who know me well will no doubt snigger gently if they read this, since I am, if I want to be especially polite to myself, considerably more Franciscan than Benedictine. Still, I do admire their indefatigable faithfulness, which is most certainly a path of imitatio Christi if ever there was one, and I do recognise how this is reflected in Lent.

This same fidelity is reflected in the many forms of contemplative prayer, especially the Jesus Prayer. Practitioners are counselled not to continually adjust their manners of prayer, but simply to keep on keeping on, faithful to the initial calling and discernment that set them on the path, trusting silently in God for the outcome and destination of their prayer.

Our lives are lived out in community, whether we know it or not. Even if we live the most solitary of lives, far from daily contact with others, still we are members of the great Eucharistic community the Church, the body of Christ, the union of all who are baptised with water and the Spirit, and who share in the Supper of the Lamb.

Faithfulness is our calling, as our Lord was faithful to his. No matter how he was tempted, he lived out his forty days in the wilderness, as he walked the Via Dolorosa on his way to the Cross. One of the meditations that formed part of yesterday’s Stations of the Cross imagined Jesus realising that, weak as he was from shock and loss of blood after being scourged, and exhausted from carrying the cross, he could simply have lain down and died before he ever reached the place of execution; yet he kept going, in faithfulness to his own calling and for the sake of us all.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

Advent!

Peace Made Flesh—courtesy of Green Patches, here are some superb Franciscan resources for Advent from the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Name.

More thoughts later, I hope—it’s nearly time to leave for church…

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast off the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
so that when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit
one God now and for ever.
Amen.

(with thanks to Liturgy—Worship that Works, where you can find more excellent Advent material)

Praying with St. Francis…

St. Francis passed on to us many prayers of praise. He went through his life finding new things for which to praise God at every turn: the little things, nature, the creatures, suffering, his brothers—for whatever is happening, he praises God.

Francis is never trying to earn God's love; he is celebrating it! He continually enjoys God's love in everything he sees and experiences. Mature prayer always breaks into gratitude and praise.

Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant act of praise.

Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

I can’t think of anything to add to this that wouldn’t detract from its beauty…

Sacred Wounds?

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.”

All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 191

It’s strange that I have found, over the years, that the practice of the Jesus Prayer cuts both ways with this matter of pain.

Firstly, it most assuredly does form “a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds,” more deeply and powerfully that any other way that I have found—at least for those called to the Prayer rather than any contemplative other form. As Irma Zalesk says, in Living the Jesus Prayer (p.63), “…the essential thing is to keep that deep, central space of our being that we call the heart wide open and turned towards [Christ]. The Jesus Prayer leads us into that space, and allows us to live there unceasingly.” If that will not transform our pain, I don’t know what will.

But there is another side to living so closely in the presence of Christ, in the “deep central space” of the heart. The Christ who said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light...” (Matthew 11.28-30) is the same Jesus who said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16.24-25)

The practice of the Jesus Prayer leads us deep and deeper into loving our fellow-creatures (human and otherwise) and so into opening our hearts to their pain. I said the other day that I could understand the impulse of those called to contemplative sorts of prayer either to gather in enclosed communities, or to live as solitaries. This life makes one so vulnerable, so thin-skinned, that it is all but impossible sometimes to live a “normal” life among people who will often have no idea what is the matter with us. Living with a heart open to the pain of the poor, the unjustly accused, the victims of war, rape, violence; to the pain of desperately mistreated animals in fur farms, the fear of the hunted fox, the grief of the abandoned kitten—these are not things that will leave us unmarked, unruffled.

But the wounds we bear in prayer for others are sacred wounds. In their very little way they are like the wounds of Christ. (A very few contemplatives, like St. Francis, have kept it up to the point where they are physically wounded in prayer.) These wounds, sacred though they are, transformative though they are both for ourselves and for those whom we bear in our hearts in prayer, are real wounds. St. Francis bled: try as he might, he could not conceal his wounds from his brothers; those of us who have not travelled so far as our Brother Francis will still bear the marks of our prayer in tears, in vulnerabilities, in “sensitivities” that some will not understand.

If we cannot conceal these marks that prayer leaves on us, what are we to do with them? How are we to live in the world? As Tertiaries, we are to live according to the Principles of the Third Order which state: “When Saint Francis encouraged the formation of The Third Order he recognised that many are called to serve God in the spirit of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience in everyday life (rather than in a literal acceptance of these principles as in the vows of the Brothers and Sisters of the First and Second Orders). The Rule of The Third Order is intended to enable the duties and conditions of daily living to be carried out in this spirit.”

I don’t know the answer to this. Perhaps one of the tasks of my remaining years may be, if it doesn't sound too vaulting an ambition, to try and work it out; and maybe this blog is at least the beginning of a place to share that process, if God allows.

Pray for me!

A Four-fold Franciscan Blessing

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator,

Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour,

and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide,

be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore.

AMEN

[I’ve been unable reliably to trace an original source for this—if anyone knows, I’d appreciate a comment!]

Medjugorje and after…

It’s the first of October already, and I’ve been putting off posting here simply because, after a full week back home, I’m still fairly speechless about the Medjugorje pilgrimage.

Google will very quickly introduce you to many pages (probably the Wikipedia article already linked here, and its internal links, provide the best place to start, especially for the unfamiliar or sceptical (!) enquirer) dealing with the village, and with the history of Marian pilgrimage to the area. You will easily be able to trace the various controversies surrounding the site, from the early disagreements with the Communist authorities of Yugoslavia, through the Bosnian War of the early 1990s, to the current inquiry by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But none of these – and as you may imagine I had read plenty before we travelled – had prepared me even slightly for the impact that most Franciscan of places would have on me. It is hard to explain how this came about, and it is this difficulty that has made me strangely reluctant to begin this post.

Certainly I experienced nothing “supernatural” in the external way. The widely reported and well-attested miracles of healing still go on, but I did not experience these directly during our stay. The experiences I did have were entirely spiritual and internal, and too private to write of here or anywhere.

What has remained, apart from a greatly deepened love of our Lady herself, is an odd kind of spiritual certainty – a sureness of heart, if I can use such a phrase. This life that I have lived, its twists and turns, the many things I would have wished otherwise, is a gift from God’s own hand. It is thoroughly permeated by the Holy Spirit, and so lived-in by Christ. I cannot choose the best bits. All that I have lived through works in the end together for my own good (Romans 8.28!); somehow for the healing of my tangled heart.

Yet again the call is to prayer, to the simplification of life. I seem to be incapable of living without getting caught up in stuff. Increasingly I’m coming to understand why men and women are called to live in community, where “stuff”, physical and social, is owned by the community, and they themselves are not caught up in it in such a personal way as we are who live in the world.

I know too how easily trying to live with less stuff can in itself become a hobby, can become “stuff” in its own right. Try entering “minimalist blog” into your favourite search engine, and you will find a legion of (mostly) young (mostly) American women and men whose waking hours seem to be devoted to working out how to live with increasingly less stuff – not all of it physical stuff, by any means. That isn’t what I’m getting at.

There is a passage in the Principles of the Third Order Society of St. Francis which reads, “Those of us who have much time at our disposal give prayer a large part in our daily lives. Those of us with less time must not fail to see the importance of prayer and to guard the time we have allotted to it from interruption.” I have made a fairly poor showing on either count, on the whole, and it is mostly to do with my attachment to stuff: social, intellectual, even spiritual stuff quite as much as physical stuff.

I am rambling. Medjugorje has been for me about far more than un-stuffing. It is, though, about living one-pointedly. The mistake some Protestants make is to imagine that Catholics worship Mary. They love her, honour her, turn to her; but she herself is continually pointing them to her Son. Medjugorje has been for me an experience of being called to leave everything and follow him, being called far deeper into the place Paul describes in the opening verses of Colossians 3:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

In the end, it’s simply about trust – trusting Jesus enough actually to believe the Beatitudes, I suppose…

9/11

Anger and wrath, these also are abominations,
   yet a sinner holds on to them.

The vengeful will face the Lord’s vengeance,
   for he keeps a strict account of their sins.
Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done,
   and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.
Does anyone harbour anger against another,
   and expect healing from the Lord?
If someone has no mercy towards another like himself,
   can he then seek pardon for his own sins?
If a mere mortal harbours wrath,
   who will make an atoning sacrifice for his sins?
Remember the end of your life, and set enmity aside;
   remember corruption and death, and be true to the commandments.
Remember the commandments, and do not be angry with your neighbour;
   remember the covenant of the Most High, and overlook faults.

Sirach 27.30-28.10

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Franciscan prayers for peace

Franciscan bloggers writing on 9/11

http://datinggod.org/2011/09/09/moving-tribute-to-an-ordinary-hero-of-911/

http://datinggod.org/2011/09/10/september-11-2001-sometimes-words-are-not-enough/

http://datinggod.org/2011/09/11/scripture-for-911-forgive-forgive-forgive/

http://feelinggreen.typepad.com/green_patches/2011/09/elegiac.html

http://littleportionhermitage.blogspot.com/2011/09/prayer-ground-zero.html

http://brjackspreachingministry.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-wrath-and-anger-are-hateful-things.html

http://friarminor.blogspot.com/2011/09/91111.html

There will be others, but these are the ones I found most moving, and useful.

Retreating...

Off to Hilfield Friary tomorrow for our TSSF Area Team Retreat; I’ll be back on Friday sometime…

I am so fond of Hilfield – set deep in the skirts of the Dorset Downs, it really does feel like A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else, in Ursula le Guin’s words.

We’ll be staying in Bernard House,

the loveliest of the guest houses, I think.

It will be good just to be part of the rhythm of Friary life, to settle into these ancient patterns that are new every time, and to renew my acquaintance with Olive the Cat. More when I get back…

Balance and the Franciscan calling…

Franciscans... Wordless witnesses of life...
These are faithful who, in the midst of their own community, demonstrate their capacity for understanding and acceptance, sharing of life and destiny, solidarity for what is noble and good. They radiate their faith in values and their hope in something that is not seen.
We stir questions in the hearts of those who see how we live:
Why are they like this?
Why do they live this way?
What or who is it that inspires them?
We are who God calls us to be: witnesses to the Gospel by action. Servants of the unworthy servants of God.

From Wrestling with Angels

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Every great secret makes one poor, it seems.  Like a powerful sexual encounter, it cannot be shared and therefore it cannot be understood or valued by others.  As a result, it is almost always misunderstood, especially by those who have not yet discovered their own secret or found their own “private room.”  The secret of divine intimacy is by definition unshareable, ineffable, and mysterious even to the one who enjoys it.  It makes you great, but it also makes you very lonely, and often the subject of cruel accusations, comparisons, and spiritual competition.

Being a beloved son [or daughter] will not make you fit in, but in fact will make you an outsider in almost all circles—sometimes even to yourself, as you question your own self-assuredness and doubt your own best moments.  Every secret makes one poor and lonely, living alone in rooms of doubt—the doubt that comes from an unshareable ecstasy.

Richard Rohr, from Soul Brothers: Men in the Bible Speak to Men Today,
pp. 91-92, 93

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I’ve been much troubled, recently, by the need for balance in my life. Balance between prayer and action, between music and (non-musical) writing, between solitude and community, between Church and the world, and especially between the expectations of others and my obligations to them.

In our daily Third Order cycle of prayer, the 24th of the month is the day for praying for one’s calling as a Franciscan, and so these things were on my mind and heart as I came into my time of silent prayer. Three quarters of that prayer time were, predictably, anything but silent, and were divided perhaps equally between distractions and turmoil. However, in the last quarter a great peace settled on me. Here am I, writing about the Jesus Prayer, about the intercessory dimension of contemplative prayer, and all things like that, and the answer to all these things is right there with me, only I hadn’t seen it…

It is so simple. If I come to the Lord with these things on my heart, with anything on my heart really, all I need to do is trust, and the answers will be given me. I don’t need to know how they’ll be given – directly, through the words or actions of others, through circumstances or the movement of my own longing – I just need to trust that they will be given, and go on with the Prayer. As Michael Ramsey once wrote, “Contemplation is for all Christians... [It] means essentially our being with God, putting ourselves in his presence, being hungry and thirsty for him, wanting him, letting heart and mind move towards him; with the needs of the world on our heart…” And am I not myself of the world? Only too clearly I am!

Pea-sticks…

We operate with the assumption that giving people new ideas changes people. It doesn’t. Believing ideas is, in fact, a way of not having to change in any significant way, especially if you can argue about them. Ideas become defences.

If you have the right words, you are considered an orthodox and law-abiding Christian. We burned people at the stake for not having the right words, but never to my knowledge for failing to love or forgive, or to care for the poor. Religion has had a love affair with words and correct ideas, whereas Jesus loved people, who are always imperfect.

You do not have to substantially change to think some new ideas. You always have to change to love and forgive ordinary people. We love any religion that asks us to change other people. We avoid any religion that keeps telling us to change.

Richard Rohr, adapted from How Men Change: A Thin Time (CD, DVD, MP3)

At our Third Order local group meeting last night, we were discussing, as part of our current study of the Principles, how a certain untidiness is a necessary and inevitable part of the Franciscan charism. We do not, cannot as followers of Francis following Christ, have everything cut and dried, all our words precisely right, and all our actions in line with them. To do so would be the way of the fanatic or the fundamentalist, not the Franciscan.

As Rohr says, Jesus loved people, in all their imperfection and all their untidiness. Look at the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman by the well at Sychar (John 4:1-30). Hers was a life with all kinds of loose ends—a life that didn’t conform to expectations, especially not orthodox Jewish expectations, and yet here was Jesus sharing with her the living water, and trusting her to share it with her fellow citizens.

We cannot allow ourselves to grow unless we are prepared to allow ourselves a little untidiness, What matters is love, rigorous, sacrificial love, not having all our ducks in a row.

And yet we are members of a religious order; we live by a rule. How does that square with this necessary untidiness? One of our group, a Tertiary of many years’ experience, told us of a wonderful expression of her late (Tertiary) husband’s: our rule is like a set of pea-sticks—a framework up which we can grow. But, just as in a vegetable garden, it is the peas that matter, not the pea-sticks!

Adult Christians?

I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because so many peace and justice people, frankly, disappointed me.  They were angry, pushy, and often dualistic thinkers on the Left. They too often perpetuated the problem in new form instead of healing it at any deep level.

As adult Christians, we need to do things from the heart space, not from the ego’s need to assert itself or win any argument.  We do not need to be better than or holier than anybody else.  There’s no long term moral advance if we merely please our own ego or if the energy is oppositional.

To purify our own motivation, and to be honest about our intentions, is the big hump between the first and second halves of life.  In the second half of our spiritual journey, we might continue to do the same things but now from a very different place:  We don’t need to win or need to be right.  We just do what we are called to do, but then let go of the results, and leave that to God.  This is what some call “pure action,” where I act without demanding any particular response or results.  One can only do that when they are doing God’s work and not just their own.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Adult Christianity and How to Get There (CD/MP3)

Rohr reminds me so clearly of one of the things that drew me to the Franciscan way in the first place—that following Francis following Christ is a way to draw together the threads that are so often disparate, disjointed and at odds with each other in the church, and yet which, in me, are as necessary, though as different, as air and water.

As Rohr says of “peace and justice people” sometimes we in the church can be angry, pushy, dualistic thinkers. Evangelicals and Catholics, Charismatics and Reformed churchmen (yes, mostly men!) are too prone to suspect each others’ doctrine and ecclesiology, spirituality and outreach, while maintaining their own style as the only way to go.

One of the marvellous things about Francis was that he transcended all these barriers. He was a man of deep passionate Scriptural knowledge and devotion, a Spirit-filled worshipper who danced along the woodland lanes playing an old twig like a fiddle, and making up praise songs in the troubadour style; yet he had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and his Eucharistic spirituality was so given over to the crucified Christ that he, Francis, eventually ended up marked with the stigmata. He was a man who had no patience with empty, corrupt tradition, yet he would never allow himself to be ordained Priest since his view of the priestly calling was so high as to make him feel forever unworthy of such a role.

As followers of Francis in our own time, perhaps we need to keep these things in mind. Only by examining ourselves with total honesty, passionately refusing every excuse for angry, pushy, dualistic thinking; and pledging ourselves, as our Principles state, “to fight against the ignorance, pride, and prejudice that breed injustice or partiality of any kind.”

What's a tau cross?

I'm always being asked this, and when I found this note from Sr. Julie Ann, I thought I'd re-post it here, since it was better and more concise than anything I could have written. (I've added the image and the links myself.)

Francis used the 'tau' in his writings, painted it on the walls and doors of the places where he stayed, and used it as his only signature on his writings.

The first recorded reference to the 'tau' is from Ezekiel 9:4, "Go through the city of Jerusalem and put a tau [cross] [mark (NRSV)] on the foreheads…"

The tau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and looks very much like the letter 'T'.

At the Fourth Lateran Council, on November 11, 1215, Pope Innocent made reference to the tau and quoted the verse from Ezekiel. It is widely accepted that St. Francis was present and that he heard the words of Pope Innocent III when he said, "The tau has exactly the same form as the cross on which our Lord was crucified on Calvary, and only those will be marked with this sign and will obtain mercy who have conformed their life to that of the Crucified Saviour."

From then on, the tau became Francis' own coat of arms.

(With thanks to Sr. Julie Ann FSCC)

Bare necessity…

Contemplation is the awareness and realization, even in some sense experience, of what each Christian obscurely believes: “It is now no longer that I live but Christ lives in me.”

Hence contemplation is more than a consideration of abstract truths about God, more even than affective meditation on things we believe. It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God’s creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. Hence contemplation does not simply “find” a clear idea of God, and confine him within the limits of that idea, and hold him there as a prisoner to whom it can always return. On the contrary, contemplation is carried away by him into his own realm, his own mystery and his own freedom. It is a pure and a virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word “wherever he may go.”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Books, 1961, pp. 5-6

It is that poverty and purity towards which we must always be straining, it seems to me. It’s that which underlies all Francis’ romance with Lady Poverty, and all the Franciscan teachings regarding simplicity and poverty. We sometimes forget, Franciscans as much as others, that simplicity is far more about purity and contemplation than it is about lifestyle. St Francis was, for all his preaching, and his founding of the Orders that bear his name, a contemplative at heart.

Even saying this somehow muddles what I’m trying to say. This is why, perhaps, this inescapable muddle-headedness of mine, God has called me so clearly to the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Here, for me at least, is the very definition of “a pure and a virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word ‘wherever he may go.’” It is as necessary to me now as the air I breathe; perhaps, even, rather more necessary in the long run…

The Feast of St. Clare of Assisi

Place your mind
before the mirror of eternity!
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!
and transform your entire being
into the image of the Godhead Itself
through contemplation…

St. Clare of Assisi

God of peace,
who in the poverty of the blessed Clare
gave us a clear light to shine in the darkness of this world:
give us grace so to follow in her footsteps
that we may, at the last, rejoice with her
    in your eternal glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect for St. Clare of Assisi

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: deliver us from an inordinate love of this world, that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant Clare, may serve you with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Richard Rohr, why you need to hear him…

“Most of us assume that the self we’re meant to ‘die to’ is the body self, the sexual self, and the emotional self. We assume that if you just get rid of your body or emotion or sex then we’ll fly towards God. But there’s no evidence for that. In fact, quite the contrary.

“Thomas Merton gave us the language of the true self and false self, instead of the body self and spirit self. It’s not your body self that needs to die, but your false self — your persona, or in Freudian terms your ego, the person you think you need to be, the persona you need to live up to.”

The positive spin on all this talk about death-to-self is that we should, he suggests, passionately, constantly choose God, and union with God. “Prayer is a daily choice to live out of the Great Self, not the small self — the God self, not the you self.”

The act of contemplation helps us to observe the “unobserved” or false self, and by so doing, to gradually detach ourselves from it. But it is not something that comes naturally in our culture. “We are a capitalist society, into accumulation, not detachment,” Fr Rohr says. “That’s why people are attracted to Buddhism. Buddhists have kept their vocabulary and their honesty about the need for detachment up to date, whereas we’re just people who have invested heavily in our own opinions and rightness, with disastrous results.”

The secret to detachment, he suggests, is to learn how to live more fully in “the now, not the past or the future”.

Some people do discover “presence”, he explains, “in love-making, in nature, in the presence of great music. As a spiritual teacher, that would be my whole desire, to say: ‘Don’t just look to the churchy moments.’ If you’re contemplative, you’re going to find these moments everywhere. And once that begins, life is no longer divided into the sacred and the secular: it’s one world.”

Perhaps the main threat to the rise in interest in authentic contemplation is that it becomes just another individualistic pop-spirituality technique, or a therapeutic tool alone.

This is something Fr Rohr is painfully aware of. “In some circles, contemplation is the new trendy thing; but when you draw close to some of these people, you find they have no love for the poor or the outsider. It’s just a new way to feel pious.”

From a 2008 Church Times interview with Fr. Richard Rohr OFM

This interview neatly sums up why I am always so excited about Fr. Richard’s teaching, and why I quote him so often on this blog. If you can, I would urge you to go and hear him at the Third Order sponsored conference this September in London. Oh, I know sometimes there are things in Rohr’s writings that come over, especially out of context, as if he is just another trendy guru of the latest Christian craze, or worse, as if he is just a Christian face for some generalised New Age spirituality. But it really isn’t so. Rohr is a Franciscan through and through, the genuine article, and if you listen to his homilies you will get a sense of how far he is from being a product of his age. As far as the Emerging Church is concerned, it’s much more nearly the case that his age is a product of him!

Of and with the poor…

We can no longer be satisfied by simply being the Church for the poor from our position of establishment.  We must realize that sometimes that very generosity, that very attempt to be good to other people, has kept us in a position of power and superiority.  Somehow we must be of and with the poor, and then be ready for some mistrust and even criticism.
Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), the holy Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, said it so truthfully, “As long as I fed the poor, they called me a saint.  When I asked, ‘Why are there so many poor people?’ they called me a communist.”

Richard Rohr, April 2010

As Franciscans, I think it is crucial that we face this question. The First and Second Orders, by virtue of their vocation to the Evangelical Counsels, live it out in common with their sisters and brothers in other religious communities—but we as Tertiaries need to examine ourselves rather rigorously on this point, I feel. Though, as our Principles state, “we possess property and earn money to support ourselves and our families,” we must consider how Rohr’s words here question our own vocation.

I don’t have an answer, of course, to these questions. The path God has somehow laid out for me has brought me closer to the way of poverty than some of my sisters and brothers, but this is through what might be called (if you leave God out of it!) force of circumstance: I can claim no holiness, or acuity of discernment, for myself. All that life since the farm accident that stopped me working some years ago has done is to give me a different perspective, a way of seeing that I didn’t have before; a cure, maybe, for a blindness common to so many educated people of my generation, who have not had to live frugally amid abundance. But it has not shown me any specific advice for anyone else… Maybe each of us has to plot our own course through this land of inequalities—it would be so hard to offer advice without appearing to manipulate, or to offer criticism.
One thing I do know. As Franciscans we must look clearly, with wide open eyes, at the poor who live among us, quite as much as at the glamorously poor of what used to be called the Third World. (I am using deliberately provocative language here!) We must set aside the dark glasses of prejudice, the tinted lenses of class, and look, really look, into the eyes of the Big Issue sellers, into the bundles of rags under the city bridges, into the doors of the temporary accommodation dotted even among the prosperous and leafy villages of Dorset, and allow them to ask their own questions of us, of our own vocation to the Third Order of St. Francis…