A Strange Pilgrimage

For all of us, these are strange times, and the strangest Lent we have known. Quite apart from the worries about our lives and livelihoods, and those of the ones we love, so many of the things that formed the sweet centre of our everyday lives have been torn away. We hope that it is a temporary tearing away, but even that is not certain. For people of faith, perhaps the most painful loss is that of meeting together for worship. The loss of fellowship, teaching, reassurance and sacrament, at the very time we need them most, is hard to bear. There are few roadmaps for where we are.

Writing on the Patheos Progressive Christianity channel, Erin Wathen says,

...sometimes, painful as it is, cancelling is the responsible, compassionate thing to do, and anything else is just hubris. Think of this illness as the black ice of liability. If there is a blizzard, you might be able to get to church. But if you can't clear the sidewalks and the parking lots, do you really want to invite people into a hazard situation–the invisible threat that is just under the surface? This is like that. Sure, folks who are not sick are going to feel like they should still come to church. But they could be carrying something they don't know they have yet, and pass it right on to their elderly or immunocompromised neighbor.

There are many unknowns here. There is unprecedented territory ahead, and nobody can say how long it might last... 

Practice Sabbath. For some, this shutdown of life as we know it is going to cause significant economic hardship... care for your neighbor as best as you can. In the meantime, recognize if your own discomfort is just inconvenience, and keep that perspective. Recognize that downtime can be a gift– an imposed sabbath of time to sit still and be with your family, without the usual rush of places to be and things to accomplish. Read together; prepare meals together (can you share with a neighbor?); maybe even binge watch some Netflix together. When’s the last time everybody was home for this long? Talk about what you can learn from this season. Talk about your blessings. Play a game. Make something. Listen to music. It really doesn't matter. Any of these things can be worshipful in their own way, if by 'worship' we mean rest and renewal by way of connecting with God and others.

In an article entitled Our Pilgrimage Begins With Staying Home, Greg Richardson writes:

Almost all of us have begun a pilgrimage recently. 

Some of us are experienced pilgrims. We prepare for a pilgrimage by deciding on our itinerary and choosing what to pack. It is important to have the proper equipment, like strong walking shoes. 

Many of us like to plan as completely as we can. We want to know what we are going to experience before we experience it. Some of us carry a detailed guide book to ensure we are as comfortable and as safe as possible.
The pilgrimage we have joined together is a little unusual for us. We probably feel like we did not have enough time to get ready. Most of us have little idea where we are going and how we will get there. There is no dependable guide book full of details about this journey. 

This pilgrimage begins with staying home... 

Like Chaucer's pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, each of us has our own tale. 

Other concerns and decisions seem to fade into the background. Questions which monopolized our time and attention before no longer seem so significant. We may learn what we thought motivated us are not the lessons we most need to learn. 

A pilgrimage is a journey, not a destination. Our pilgrimage begins and each step is sacred space. We learn its lessons along the way, overcoming obstacles and dealing with challenges... 

When we stay home we find ourselves surrounded by the familiar. Most of us have fewer distractions. 

Now we share a pilgrimage in which we stay home. We are not traveling to a distant country or visiting foreign places. Each day brings us to a new part of our journey and we see it in new ways. 

The challenge for us is not about keeping up with a parade of new people and places. 

Our pilgrimage begins as we take time to pay attention to the stories within us... 

This voyage of discovery, our pilgrimage of staying home, will introduce us to who we can become. 

We did not choose to take this trip and we did not have time to plan or prepare for it...

In our local Quaker meeting, the warden has undertaken to keep the Meeting House open for those rental groups who still want to meet - especially those holding one-to-one sessions to care for vulnerable adults - but more than that, she has promised to sit quietly in the empty meeting room for the hour from 10.30 am that we usually meet, and has invited Friends, in their own homes, to join her. This seems to me to be an immense kindness, and a sign of love and hope for us all.

Our local churches, Catholic and Anglican, Baptist and United (Methodist/URC), as well as the independent evangelical churches, have suspended worship for the time being, in line with government advice. Where possible, church buildings are being kept open for prayer and reflection, the sanctuary lamps burning, the blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle.

Meantime, whatever practice we have of regular prayer and attention - and now might be a good time to establish one if we don't have one in place - let us all, wherever we are, hold each other, and all who serve and who depend upon our meetings, in the light of the "the Love that moves the sun and the other stars" (Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII) more than ever before.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners...

[This is an expanded version of a post on my other blog, Silent Assemblies]

Idolatry or openness?

Almost all religion begins with a specific encounter with something that feels “holy” or transcendent: a place, an emotion, an image, music, a liturgy, an idea that suddenly gives you access to God’s Bigger World. The natural and universal response is to “idolize” and idealize that event. It becomes sacred for you, and it surely is. The only mistake is that too many then conclude that this is the way, the best way, the superior way, the “only” way for everybody—that I myself just happen to have discovered. Then, they must both protect their idol and spread this exclusive way to others. (They normally have no concrete evidence whatsoever that other people have not also encountered the holy.)

The false leap of logic is that other places, images, liturgies, scriptures, or ideas can not give you access. “We forbid them to give you access; it is impossible,” we seem to say! Thus much religion wastes far too much time trying to separate itself from—and create “purity codes” against—what is perceived as secular, bad, heretical, dangerous, “other,” or wrong. Jesus had no patience with such immature and exclusionary religion, yet it is still a most common form to this day. Idolatry has been called the only constant and real sin of the entire Old Testament, and idolatry is whenever we make something god that is not God, or whenever we make the means into an end. Any attempt to create our own “golden calf” is usually first-half-of-life religion, and eventually false religion.

Richard Rohr, June 2012

The church [is] no other thing but the society, gathering or company of such as God hath called out of the world and worldly spirit to walk in his light and life... Under this church ... are comprehended all, and as many, of whatsoever nation, kindred, tongue or people they be, though outwardly strangers and remote from those who profess Christ and Christianity in words and have the benefit of the Scriptures, as become obedient to the holy light and testimony of God in their hearts... There may be members therefore of this Catholic church both among heathens, Turks, Jews and all the several sorts of Christians, men and women of integrity and simplicity of heart, who ... are by the secret touches of this holy light in their souls enlivened and quickened, thereby secretly united to God, and there-through become true members of this Catholic church.

Robert Barclay, 1678

God is so very much greater than our minds can themselves comprehend that it is simply foolish to feel we can legislate how he may or may not communicate with our fellow human beings. It is also very shortsighted indeed if we feel that we can legislate where our fellow Christians may or may not turn for inspiration and comfort along their spiritual journey. To say, “You mustn’t read that, it’s influenced by another faith!” or, “You may not publish that, we have withheld our imprimatur!” is so far from Christ’s way (consider his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4.1-42), and its consequences) that it is one of the great acts of unfaithfulness, not to mention foot-marksmanship, in the history of the church.

May we be known by our generosity, our open-heartedness, to all women and men of spiritual yearning, of whichever faith, or none. May we become a refuge and a comfort to them, through the indwelling Christ who loves through us… and may they be a challenge, a comfort and an inspiration to us too.

Avoiding responsibility?

One of the elders said: A monk ought not to inquire how this one acts, or how that one lives. Questions like this take away from prayer, and draw us on to backbiting and chatter. There is nothing better than to keep silent…

One of the elders said: Pray attentively and you will soon straighten out your thoughts.

from Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, New Directions Publishing Corp., 1960

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How true this is – increasingly, this Lent, I find I’m being drawn to silence, to stillness, to withdrawing from the busyness of so much of church life. I am fortunate, in having only recently moved to this town, to be relatively free of the kind of commitments I too easily make, and so I’m able to do this without causing too much inconvenience to others. But it is hard, sometimes, because one is inevitably misunderstood, even in the kindest of ways, and it is hard to avoid hurting good people by one’s seeming rejection of things that are, in themselves, perfectly good and useful.

---

‘Time after time, the old men brought [Abba Theodore of Pherme] back to Scetis saying, “Do not abandon your role as a deacon.” Abba Theodore said to them, “Let me pray to God so that he may tell me for sure whether I ought to function publicly as a deacon in the liturgy.” This is how he prayed to God: “If it is your will that I should stand in this place, make me sure of it.” A pillar of fire appeared to him, stretching from earth of heaven, and a voice said, “If you can become like this pillar of fire, go and be a deacon.” So he decided against it. He went to church, and the brothers bowed to him and said, “If you don’t want to be a deacon, at least administer the chalice.” But he refused and said, “If you do not leave me alone, I shall leave here for good.” So they left him in peace.’

The instant temptation is to say that figures like this were avoiding responsibility, or setting impossibly high standards to justify their refusal of office… The issue is not about whether or not someone should assume their ‘proper’ responsibilities in the church (or society for that matter); the primary responsibility in the desert is… responsibility for your own and each other’s growth and truthfulness before God.

from Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, Medio Media / Lion Books, 2003

Connect 2010

Next week, starting on Tuesday night, I'm going to be at Connect 2010 at Holton Lee.

From the website:

What is Connect?

Connect 2010 is a five-day teaching and worship event where hundreds of people of all ages can connect and grow together in Word and Spirit. The last three days will include family camping and a change of flavour as young families invade the site.

More than 30 south Dorset churches are involved in organising the event, which is held at Holton Lee (between Poole and Wareham in Dorset), just a few minutes walk from the beautiful Poole Harbour and with its own stunning heathland walks in 350 acres.

The family weekend (July 16, 17, 18) will include a full programme of children’s activities in their own separate marquee, a chill out zone on Saturday evening for 13's to 17's plus a variety of fun family events throughout the weekend.

If you come, look me up. I'll be the one wearing a Tau Cross and a green Prayer Ministry Team name-tag!

In one of those God-incidences that is always surprising, but shouldn't ever be, this morning's email from Richard Rohr's Centre for Action and Contemplation reads as follows:

Greatness emerges when, above all else, people are confident. When we believe - together - that life is good, God is good and humanity is good, we become very safe and salutary people for others.  What we seem to suffer from today is a lack of confidence, which would become a calm self confidence.  St. Therese of Lisieux wisely said that her entire spirituality was about "confidence and gratitude"!

We can all do exciting and imaginative things when we are confident that we are a part of a story line that is going somewhere and is connected to something good.  Without this, it is very hard to be either confident or grateful.

Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness

This event has grown from a glimmer of an idea into this wonderful thing in what seems like no time at all - but it's not without a pre-echo, as it were. You can read my account of the event at Wareham 11 years ago on The Mercy Site.

Our Vicar at Holy Rood, Rhona, writes in her pastoral letter in July's Parish News:

People often ask why the churches don't work together more closely. It's true the amount of time we spend worshipping together is relatively small. But churches work together to a remarkable degree, supporting one another to a variety of ways. They are often overlooked as much of this is less visible to the general public...

A major new joint venture that is gathering the churches together from across south Dorset takes place at Holton Lee, Sandford this month. More than 30 different churches are involved in organizing Connect 2010. It is a five-day teaching and worship event where people of all ages can connect and grow together in Word and Spirit. We see it as a time for recognising our shared faith and mission and to find what things we can do better together than apart. It aims to be outward looking, not so much getting over hurdles as reaching shared goals.

Come and join us in this adventure of making strengthening old connections and forging new ones.

Do click over and read the whole letter... and do consider coming and joining in if you're going to be in the area. I rather suspect this will be something not to miss!

Good news for the New Year…

Dr Barbara M. Orlowski’s remarkable book, Spiritual Abuse Recovery: Dynamic Research on Finding a Place of Wholeness, has recently been published by Wipf and Stock. You can order a copy direct from Barb by emailing her at info@churchexiters.com. I really would encourage any of you who have been touched in any way by this terrible experience to read Barb’s healing, encouraging book, full of the mercy and the justice of Christ…

From the publisher’s website:

What factors contribute to active Christians in ministry leaving their church and becoming exiting statistics? Every year dedicated Christian people leave churches because of spiritual abuse. The stories of people who left their home church because of a negative and hurtful experience paint a picture of a widespread occurrence which beckons consideration by church leaders and church congregants alike.

Spiritual abuse, the misuse of spiritual authority to maltreat followers in the Christian Church, is a complex issue. This book shows how people processed their grief after experiencing spiritual abuse in their local church and how they rediscovered spiritual harmony. Their spiritual journey shows how one may grow through this devastating experience.

This book offers a thoughtful look at the topic of spiritual recovery from clergy abuse through the eyes of those who have experienced it. It invites church leaders to consider this very real dysfunction in the Church today and aims to demonstrate a path forward to greater freedom in Christ after a season of disillusionment with church leadership.

“In an age of increasing calls for strong church leadership, this book is a gift to church leaders and those who have been severely hurt and abused in our churches. Through careful research and an insider’s perspective, Barb has opened up both pathways for healing from church abuse and insights for leadership to ensure that potential future abuse is stopped.”—Alan Jamieson, author of A Churchless Faith

“What we refer to as spiritual abuse was a concern for Jesus in his earthly ministry and it is a common problem today. It is, therefore, surprising that more attention is not given to it by today’s Christian community. Barb Orlowski, however, does take it seriously as she offers insight into the causes of bad church experiences and how to recover from them. Her counsel alerts people to the dangers of spiritual abuse, and if leaders hear her, they will be less likely to become part of the problem… I encourage you to read it”—Ken Blue, author of Healing Spiritual Abuse

“Dr. Orlowski’s research has provided a balance for various perspectives on the experience of woundedness. She listens to the voices of the wounded and lets them inform us of their reality of feeling disappointment and disenfranchisement, tragedy and turbulence in the Church… For recovery, Dr. Orlowski gives an excellent starting point—the voice of the wounded—and follows that with the grace of God demonstrated through hearing the voice of God and basing recovery on the Word of God.”—Kirk E. Farnsworth, author of Wounded Workers

Simple competence...

Another exciting piece of Emerging Christianity is that, really for the first time, we've stopped idealizing or being preoccupied with the top. We have turned to a search for actual gifts, real service, and proven holiness. What we need now is simple competence in doing the job of revealing, healing, and reconciling this pained humanity and this suffering world.

The first question is not, "Is she trained in theology?" or "Is he ordained?" The first question is "Can she do the job? Is he changing lives? Is it working?"

For centuries we have argued about bishops, ministers, priests, and protocol, with few results and more divisions. Now we realize that it is simple competence and holiness that finally matters. Are lives being changed? Are people meeting God, themselves, and one another in good and healing ways? All the rest is window dressing. Jesus had legitimization from no formal institution, but he sure did the job.

Adapted from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008:

“What is The Emerging Church?”

I have to confess that this idea of simple competence is one of the things I miss about the Vineyard. Admittedly, in the UK at any rate, it's never been much more than an idea, or an ideal at best, but it is a beautiful idea. When God's call is filtered through years of vocation conferences, study, assignments and examinations, its edge is often blunted if it isn't lost altogether. All this may help provide a firewall against potential abuses (though tragic events have often enough proved that it isn't an impenetrable one) but it most certainly loses vocations, and breaks hearts longing to serve God.

The theology of holy orders, and the traditional roles of Bishop, Priest and Deacon are deeply attested to in the history of the Church since the earliest days - some would argue, from the apostles themselves. Perhaps the old concept of Minor Orders was intended to extend this, and in many ways roles within our own Church of England such as Licensed Lay Minister (or Lay Reader), Lay Pastoral Assistant (or Lay Pastor) are a modern equivalent. Certainly they provide a welcome and useful path to service within a disciplined ecclesial structure.

It would however take a hardy Catholic, whether Anglo- or Roman, I think, to assert that the Holy Spirit should be limited by the structures of church governance. I am excited and challenged by Rohr's words here. And Rohr, remember, is a Priest in the Roman Catholic Church, and a Franciscan (OFM).

Things are moving and changing in the church (I use the small 'C' advisedly) in ways I don't understand. Some I know feel terrified, as though the earth itself were shifting under their feet, and I sympathise. But Aslan is not a tame Lion, as Mrs Beaver observed, and we are only human. The world has changed out of all recognition in the few years I've walked around on it; should the church not change too, since it is made up of ordinary people trying to follow Christ? It is still the Body of Christ in the world, but it must be flexible in order to serve in the world, just as my hand must flex to turn a sick person's door handle if I am to be able to visit them.

Rediscovering Christ…

Emerging Christianity seems to be willing to recognize that it is at the energetic level, the life level, the love level, the lifestyle level that the living mystery of God and Jesus is passed on. It is not just getting the words right, and making a verbal affirmation of your belief in words and creeds. Verbal belief systems ask almost nothing of us in terms of actual change of mind and heart and lifestyle.

The broader Jesus scholarship that we are now enjoying widens the view to include previously neglected perspectives: the essential Jewish lens, the feminist/womanist lens, the lens of the poor, the unique lens of every minority, and the lens of sincere secular seekers, who often point out our own blind spots to us. You cannot see what you were never told to look for from inside.

I personally do not think Jesus ever intended to create Christianity as a new or separate religion. I think he was trying to reform and restore the Jewish religion, and in that he offered us the criteria by which to reform all religion forever…

The contemplative mind is really just the mind that emerges when you pray instead of think first. Praying opens the field and moves beyond fear and judgment and agenda and analysis, and just lets the moment be what it is—as it is.

We really have to be taught that mind. We now are pretty sure that it was systematically taught—mostly in the monasteries—as late as the 13th and even into the 14th century. But once we got into the oppositional mind of the Reformation and the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the contemplative mind pretty much fell by the wayside. The wonderful thing is that it is now being rediscovered across denominations, and there is no select group that holds it or that teaches it. Catholics still use the word “contemplation,” but usually have not been taught the practice, even monks and nuns and priests…

The contemplative mind does not need to prove anything or disprove anything. It looks for wisdom by saying, “What does this text ask of me, what do I need to change in me?” Not, "how can I change others?"

The contemplative mind lets the terrifying/wonderful moment be what it is and primarily ask something of me, not always using it to convert others.

The contemplative mind is willing to hear from a fresh beginner’s mind, yet also learn from the old and solid Tradition.

The contemplative mind has the humility and patience to think “both/and” instead of “all or nothing.” We call this non-dual thinking. It easily leads to a “Third Way” mentality, neither fight nor flight, but standing in between where I can hold what I do know together with what I don’t know. And then I let that wonderful mix lead me to wisdom instead of easy, quick knowledge which largely just creates opinionated people instead of wise people.

Richard Rohr, adapted from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008:
“What is The Emerging Church?”

I can’t help but feel that Rohr has put his finger here on something very important for us to realise as we look at the Church at the beginning of the 21st century, shaken by internal strife and the rumours of schism, increasingly threatened from without by the minions of political correctness and jobsworthery, yet strangely full of new life and hope on the level of individual fellowships, congregations and groups.

The political model of doing church, just like the Thatcherite business model of running public services, is beginning to fall apart at the seams, showing the creaking framework of false assumptions that holds it all together. We are rediscovering Christ, after all these years!

The Principles, Day 5, reads: “The [Third] Order [Society of St. Francis] is founded on the conviction that Jesus Christ is the perfect revelation of God; that true life has been made available to us through His Incarnation and Ministry; by His Cross and Resurrection; and by the sending of his Holy Spirit. Our Order believes that it is the commission of the church to make the gospel known to all and therefore accepts the duty of bringing others to know Christ, and of praying and working for the coming of the Kingdom of God.”

That is our simple calling. If we do that, if, like Francis himself, we drop everything and follow our Lord, taking him at his word, then all else will fall into place, and as the Lord commissioned him, we will help rebuild his Church. What Rohr calls “the contemplative mind” is in many ways just that: being prepared to look from within outwards to the suffering and broken world with the eyes of the indwelling Christ, who said, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17.20ff NRSV)

Move it!

I wrote, last December, a post entitled Free at Last, discussing what has come to be called, not always helpfully I suspect, “spiritual abuse”. I linked to Dr Barb Orlowski’s ground-breaking original research at her Church Exiters website. I cannot recommend this too highly—if you have any experience of this kind of thing, directly or indirectly, or if you are in a position of pastoral or other responsibility where you could inadvertently find yourself involved, you simply must read Barb’s dissertation.

I just received an email from Barb, explaining that her book proposal based on this work has been accepted for publication. This will mean, of course, that while she will be free to publish excerpts, and link to places where you can order the book, the complete text will soon have to be taken down.

So, get on over there pronto, and read this extraordinary work complete, in pdf, before it’s too late!

A land full of bloodshed, and a city of injustice...

David Gushee has a post that every Western Christian ought to read, on the Associated Baptist Press website, entitled "A Christian's lament over the Pew torture poll".

He says,

Dear Jesus,

Everyone seems to be talking about the poll put out last week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. They found that 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe “the use of torture against suspected terrorists to gain important information” to be often or sometimes justified. Only 16 percent of this group -- a community that by self-definition is very, very serious about following you -- believes torture is never justified. That number was lower than any other group polled.

I think that what really got people’s attention with this poll, Lord, is that both evangelical identity and church attendance were positively correlated with support for torture. Thirteen percent more evangelicals said torture was often or sometimes justified than in the general population. In other words: The more often people go to church, the more they support torture. So those of your followers who go to church every week support torture at 54 percent, while those who seldom or never go support it at 42 percent...

But, Jesus, can it be that the problem is that the churches are already empty? Can it be that the institution that you founded to advance your mission in the world is already empty of any understanding of what it might really mean to follow you? Is it already empty of people who take your teachings and example so seriously that they might have the capacity to resist seductive and dangerous ideas floating around our culture -- like the idea that if torture “works” to “protect national security,” and thus is something that followers of Jesus Christ ought to support as good loyal Americans?

Is your church already empty of courageous leaders who are willing to lose their jobs in order to say a resounding NO to a heretical idea like that? Is it already empty of people who understand that if you are a Christian, you cannot serve two masters, like, for example, Jesus and National Security? Is it already empty of people who understand that because all human beings are made in your image, there are some things that we just can’t do to anyone, no matter who they are?

What is this thing called “Christianity” in this country, Lord Jesus? Does it have anything to do with you? It seems a strangely Americanized thing, a disastrously domesticated faith toward which people can nod their heads in loyalty as long as it doesn’t conflict with their full participation in whatever this country feels like it wants to do.

You founded an international, countercultural movement filled with followers who did everything you taught them to do to advance the peaceable and just reign of your Father in this rebellious world. We American Christians have turned it into a culture-religion that has nothing to say even about, say, waterboarding, slamming people repeatedly into walls, forced nudity, prolonged shackling, 11 days of sleep deprivation, psychological terror, sexual humiliation, religious desecration, and so much more! Or that even supports all of this to protect ... America!

O Jesus, what have you to do with a religion like this? “I spit you out of my mouth” -- these words of yours somehow come to mind (Rev. 3:16)!

But really you ought to go and read the whole thing.

I wonder what the result would be in this country, in the UK? Probably less support I think, both within and without the churches - but with the present government's human rights record sinking lower and lower (witness the policing of the G20 demonstrations) I wonder how long it will remain like that. Do read David's article, though, and think and pray it through for yourself. This is important. If we don't know what we as Christians think about things like this, how can we possibly know how to be the hands and feet, and voice, of Jesus in the election booth, or on the street? How can we pray, unless our hearts are broken for those who suffer such things?

Going to the side and doing it differently...

A core principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation is: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Just go ahead and live positively "in God, through God, with God."

In the short run, you will hold the unresolved tension of the cross. In the long run, you will usher in something entirely new and healing.

This was the almost intuitive spiritual genius of Saint Francis. He wasted no time attacking the rich churches and pretentious clergymen; he just went to the side and did it differently.

Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness, p. 15

How different this is from some of the writings of "church-leaving" Christians you find around the innertoobs! It seems to me that it's only in this "going to the side" that we make a way for grace to flow through our own lives, and through the laying-down of our lives.

Unmerciful servants?

Unless and until you understand the biblical concept of God's unmerited favour, God's unaccountable love, most of the biblical text cannot be interpreted or tied together in any positive way.

It is the key and the code to everything transformative in the Bible.

In fact, people who have not experienced the radical character of grace will always misinterpret the meanings and the direction of the Bible. The Bible will become a burden and obligation more than a gift.

Richard Rohr, from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality

I think what Rohr is writing about here may well lie at the root of the abuse Christians sometimes suffer, disastrously, in church situations, and which I touched on in passing yesterday. I don't think abuse within churches, often referred to as "spiritual abuse", arises from any one denomination, or even from any one strand of churchmanship, more vulnerable though some may be to it than others. I think the problem lies just where Rohr explains it, when people, pastors especially, fail truly to grasp the depth, the essential nature, of God's mercy in Christ, and of the limitless grace that pours out from it. It may be that, as Rohr says, they have not experienced it; or it may be that, having experienced it they have failed to appropriate it for themselves, and thus they cannot pass it on. Or they may, horrifically, have actually forgotten it. Like the people in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23) they may have known Christ's mercy, but the daily responsibility of their positions, and the continual friction of church life, and perhaps most importantly the lack of support - who is pastoring the pastor? - have strangled the memory of grace, and they find themselves hanging onto the mere framework of the word.

This is an immense tragedy for the one who finds themselves in such a position, but it can be equally a tragedy for those for whose souls they are responsible. Harsh though it may sound, Jesus has a word for those who have received mercy, yet fail to pass it on (Matthew 18.21-35). But what of those who have allowed them to come to such a place: those who have failed to take care of their pastors, failed to watch out for signs of weariness and pain, failed even to pray for them? None of us can risk complacency, I think…

Being Church…

The two main sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, are the spiritual pillars of the Church. They are not simply instruments by which the Church exercises its ministry. They are not just means by which we become and remain members of the Church but belong to the essence of the Church. Without these sacraments there is no Church. The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism and the Eucharist. When people are baptised in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and when they gather around the table of Christ and receive his Body and Blood, they become the people of God, called the Church…

The Church is the people of God. The Latin word for "church," ecclesia, comes from the Greek ek, which means "out," and kaleo, which means "to call." The Church is the people of God called out of slavery to freedom, sin to salvation, despair to hope, darkness to light, an existence centered on death to an existence focused on life.

When we think of Church we have to think of a body of people, travelling together. We have to envision women, men, and children of all ages, races, and societies supporting one another on their long and often tiresome journeys to their final home…

The Church is holy and sinful, spotless and tainted. The Church is the bride of Christ, who washed her in cleansing water and took her to himself "with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless" (Ephesians 5:26-27). The Church too is a group of sinful, confused, anguished people constantly tempted by the powers of lust and greed and always entangled in rivalry and competition.

When we say that the Church is a body, we refer not only to the holy and faultless body made Christ-like through baptism and Eucharist but also to the broken bodies of all the people who are its members. Only when we keep both these ways of thinking and speaking together can we live in the Church as true followers of Jesus…

The Church is an object of faith. In the Apostles' Creed we pray: "I believe in God, the Father, ... in Jesus Christ, his only Son in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." We must believe in the Church! The Apostles' Creed does not say that the Church is an organization that helps us to believe in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, we are called to believe in the Church with the same faith we believe in God.

Often it seems harder to believe in the Church than to believe in God. But whenever we separate our belief in God from our belief in the Church, we become unbelievers. God has given us the Church as the place where God becomes God-with-us.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

I am deeply concerned for people who live as Christians outside any church. I know that in so many cases they are women and men who have been deeply hurt, mistreated, abused, within church communities, and cannot now trust themselves to church as family, just as sometimes victims of sexual and other kinds of abuse by relatives cannot trust themselves to stable relationships. But not all "out of church Christians" are in this situation.

Of course there are those too who simply believe they are better off out of it - "I don't need to go to church to be a Christian!" - and many of them have deeply thoughtful and principled reasons for their position.

I am by no means making a case here for the established churches - Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian or whatever - over against less formal groups of Christians, from Warehouse Church to home church. What I am saying is that, as Nouwen points out above, being a Christian is necessarily being church. "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12.12-13) If we are isolated from the rest of the body, we may be like a toe that has been cut off, and left on the side of the road. Our position may not be not encouraging. We may simply shrivel and die; but we mustn't forget that there are crows… and that worries me.

I shall have to go on thinking, and above all praying, about this…

Still more imperfect...

The entire universe seems to be operating out of a chaos theory of one sort or another. And whatever made us think that we are different than that? Well, the thing that did it more than anything else was religion. It taught us that we could be perfect.

When I spiritually direct people I strongly counsel them to mistrust any heroic gestures. They are much more food for the ego than they are food for God. God does not need your heroics - God needs who you really are. That is all you can ever give to God, not an idealized or perfect self...

Once you know that God has loved you even in your unlovability - which is always the character of a vital spiritual experience - you can't be dualistic anymore, all quid pro quo thinking falls apart.

Now you're inside of mystery that holds imperfection. So now what does perfection become? Perfection becomes not the exclusion of the contaminating element, the enemy, but in fact perfection is precisely the ability to include imperfection. That's perfection!

Richard Rohr, from The Little Way

And that, my friends, is the final answer to all those who would, in our churches and elsewhere, who would discriminate against anyone on the grounds of race, income, background, appearance, sex, sexuality, or anything else. In Christ, "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of [us] are one."