Presidential Address by the Archbishop of York - Monday 9th July 2007

Dr John Sentamu gave the Presidential Address at the General Synod meeting in York today.

You need to read this superb address in its entirety, but just for a taster, here's the beginning and end of what ++John said:

'There is a commanding invitation which echoes throughout the Bible. It’s a message given at various times to patriarchs and prophets, to nations and to shepherds, to Zechariah and to Mary, to disciples and to fledgling congregations in the church’s earliest days.

“Fear not, do not be afraid”.

My brothers and sisters this is a message that we need to hear, because it seems to me that we have become afraid. And what are we afraid of? Of causing offence by being ourselves? Afraid of the future? Afraid of the challenges to our faith and actions from many quarters, to which we don’t know how to respond without giving offence in return? Are we afraid of those who are different from us? Afraid of failure, afraid of ridicule? Afraid of looking foolish? Afraid of taking risks?

...

Don’t listen to what the cynics say about the Church of England, that “it moves forward by constantly looking backwards.” Don’t allow yourselves to be persuaded by those who say “We’ve tried that before and it never worked”.

It’s after they’ve been out fishing all night and caught nothing, when they’re tired and hungry and discouraged, that Jesus says to his disciples “Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.”

And for the Israelites on the brink of the promised land, the dream was ready and God was ready, but the people weren’t because of their self-doubt and fear. They forgot that they were children of God. What happened to our dreams? Where’s the vision God put before us? What’s wrecking it? Is it because we are sinful, because we keep getting things wrong?

I don’t think that’s it. I think our dream is being delayed because our fear tricks us into thinking of ourselves as grasshoppers or worms.

In place of fear, we must face the troubles which confront us, in the church and in the world, with steadfastness and wisdom. This means facing up to crises, when they occur, with honesty and realism, not minimising the problem but not supersizing it either, keeping it in Godly proportion.

Missionaries in China back in the 1930s noted that the Chinese ideogram for ‘crisis’ is a combination of two other word pictures – ‘opportunity’ and ‘danger’. When we perceive a crisis, we need to see it in the light of its dangerous opportunity - not being paralysed by fear of the danger, but spurred on by hope in the opportunity.

In the 1st letter of John, we read that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.”

In the face of all that confronts us, and makes us fearful, let us recognise the authority of God’s word made human in the face of Jesus Christ. His ancient promises of love, mercy and justice made manifest as God pitched his tent among us and we beheld His glory. Let us also be confident, as we have faith in the Word of God, trusting God’s own testimony. Do we believe the reports of the Lord? Do we believe the evidence of our own eyes, as we see God at work in lives and communities transformed? Let us live out that faith. Jesus Christ came among us, died, rose and ascended and we have received the Holy Spirit. He is with us till the end of time.

The Lord says to us all: “Fear not, for I have overcome the world.”

So, my brothers and sisters, let us not be afraid.

But rather, Put out into the deep.'

What contemplation isn't - Merton again...

'Contemplation is more than a consideration of abstract truths about God, more even than affective meditation on the 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 holds 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 virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, but its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word "wherever He may go."'

'Contemplation can never be the object of calculated ambition. It is not something we plan to obtain with our practical reason, but is the living water of the spirit that we thirst for, like a hunted deer thirsting after a river in the wilderness.'

Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961: pp. 5, 10

"Prayer is... freedom"

'Prayer is the truest guarantee of personal freedom. We are most truly free in the free encounter of our hearts with God in His word and in receiving His Spirit which is the Spirit of truth and freedom. The Truth that makes us free is not merely a matter of information about God but the presence in us of a divine person by love and grace, bringing us into the intimate personal life of God as His Sons [and Daughters] by adoption. This is the basis of all prayer and all prayer should be oriented to this mystery of adoption in which the Spirit in us recognizes the Father. The cry of the Spirit in us, the cry of recognition that we are Sons [and Daughters] in the Son, is the heart of our prayer and the great motive of prayer. Hence recollection is not the exclusion of material things but attentiveness to the Spirit in our inmost heart. The contemplative life should not be regarded as the exclusive prerogative of those who dwell within monastic walls. All can seek and find this intimate awareness and awakening which is a gift of love and a vivifying touch of creative and redemptive power, that power which raised Christ from the dead and which cleanses us from dead works to serve the living God. It should certainly be emphasized today that prayer is a real source of personal freedom in the midst of a world in which we are dominated by massive organizations and rigid institutions which seek only to exploit us for money and power. Far from being the cause of alienation, true religion in spirit is a liberating force that helps us to find ourselves in God.'

Thomas Merton. The Hidden Ground of Love. Letters, Volume 1. William H. Shannon. editor. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985: p. 159.

Home again!

Back home safely in Wool last night, after what seemed like a long train journey across the width of England from Norwich.

Jan and the cats were fine, and seem to have had quite a good time in my absence! I just had the best time at the Julian Shrine. Maybe later I'll try and say something about the spiritual side of this, but at the moment it still feels very private. Practically, though, if anyone else is thinking of going, do! Not only is it the most wonderful place to visit, and to pray (see this picture of the Shrine in Mother Julian's cell) but I would seriously recommend the Guest House next door, run by the Community of All Hallows, rather than some hotel in the city. Sr Pamela will give you the warmest welcome, and if my experience is anything to go by, you will meet some fascinating people among your fellow guests.

Just be careful of the bookshop in The Julian Centre next door - you can do serious damage to your wallet without even noticing... If nothing else, though, pick up a copy of All Shall Be Well, Sheila Upjohn's marvellous modern language translation of The Revelations of Divine Love, which the Centre has recently republished. They have pretty much every other translation as well, including the essential scholarly edition by Colledge & Walsh, and at least one edition of the original text, and loads of quality icons, rosaries and other bits & bobs.

As an aside, if you look at the picture of the Shrine, you'll see on the left a kind of shelf under the stone crucifix carved under the window. (The shelf is used for votive candles in little blue pots.) That shelf marks the original floor level, and the window, which opens onto the church next door, was where she would hear Mass, and receive the Blessed Sacrament. To sit in silence in the place where Julian herself prayed is something I quite lack the words to describe.

In the last chapter of her book Julian writes about her Revelations:

"I desired in many ways to know what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end."

On Retreat!

I'm off on retreat to the Julian Centre in Norwich, at the church where the Lady Julian of Norwich had her cell in the 14th and early 15th century. I'm staying not in the church of course, but in All Hallows House, the guest house.

I'm leaving in the morning tomorrow, Monday, travelling up by train... I'll stay three full days. and travel home on the Friday. I'd be very glad of your prayers, not only for safe travelling and a good retreat, but for Jan and the cats while I'm away.

Look out for another post on Friday, or soon after! Take care, everyone...

Saturday silliness: Literary Meme

I found this on The Wingèd Man's blog:

This one is the literary meme. The instructions are:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

The book is Anglicanism: the answer to modernity ed. by Duncan Dormer et al. The fifth full sentence on page 161 is:

"Over a century of liturgical renewal has ironed out many of the once striking differences between Anglicans and others in forms of public worship."

H'mm. Has it?

I wanted the seventh full sentence:

"Simply being a Christian by itself marks you out now as different."

Gospel Agenda

Vicky K Black, at Speaking to the Soul, has posted this extraordinary extract (attribution below):

'Debate within the church about who is eligible to be “in” and who must be excluded is nothing new. It was a main feature even of the very first years after Christ. That first debate was so long ago, and so decisively settled, that it is hard to realize today just how difficult a question it really was: Can Gentiles be included in the Christian church?

The argument that Gentiles should follow the law, from what seemed to be a clear and unquestionably correct reading of Scripture, could have appeared unassailable, except that it was met by the experience of the working Holy Spirit in the midst of this new community of faith. Jewish Christians spoke up on behalf of the Gentile Christians, speaking about what they had seen in their lives. They had seen evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the Gentile believers, just as they had seen it in their own. After much personal internal struggle, the apostle Peter baptized Gentile believers without requiring them to first be circumcised. When challenged about this, he defended his actions in this way: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

Now it is time for me, as a straight person, to speak up. I can bear witness, like Peter, to seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those whom the church has traditionally said were “unclean” and “unfit” for consideration as members of Christ’s body. I can bear witness to seeing and experiencing in my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters lives of repentance, forgiveness, and transformation through Jesus. It is up to you, and to me, to be like Peter and not hinder God but to welcome God’s grace in the lives of others.'

From “The Gospel Agenda” by Susan Buchanan, in Episcopal Life / New Hampshire Episcopal News (October 2006).

In a post last year, I said something to the effect of her last paragraph, but Susan has put it so much more clearly and trenchantly than I did. It really is time that we straight folks spoke up on this, despite the risk of criticism from some of our sisters and brothers. To remain silent in these circumstances is not tact, it is complicity. Of course discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is not the same thing as racism, despite certain obvious similarities, but the silence of straight people in the face of it is remarkably close, morally, to the silence of white people in the face of apartheid.

Limitless grace...

"All through the Verba Seniorum [The Sayings of the Desert Fathers] we find a repeated insistence on the primacy of love over everything else in the spiritual life: over knowledge, gnosis, asceticism, contemplation, solitude, prayer. Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions. The more lofty they are, the more dangerous the illusion.

Love, of course, means something much more then mere sentiment, much more than token favors and perfunctory almsdeeds. Love mean an interior and spiritual identification with one's neighbor, so that she is not regarded as an "object" to "which" one "does good." The fact is that good done to another as an object is of little or no spiritual value. Love takes one's neighbor as one's other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion and reserve and reverence without which no one can presume to enter into the sanctuary of another's subjectivity. From such love all authoritarian brutality, all exploitation, domineering and condescension must necessarily be absent. The saints of the desert were enemies of every subtle or gross expedient by which "the spiritual man" contrives to bully those he thinks inferior to himself, thus gratifying his own ego. They had renounced everything that savored of punishment and revenge, however hidden it might be."

Thomas Merton. The Wisdom of the Desert. New York: New Directions Press, 1960: pp. 17-18.

Nothing I could say would do anything but take away from this!

We don't know how to pray...

I was thinking more about my post the other day on the way we pray, and it occurred to me that perhaps I hadn't said as much as I should about what we actually do do, if we don't know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8.26).

The following is edited from a page on all this on The Mercy Site:

To quote from Michael Ramsey's Canterbury Pilgrim: "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." That is what intercession is: a man or a woman daring to come before the throne of God with the need and the pain of the broken world (Romans 8:22) on their heart.

Ole Hallesby (Prayer, 1948) writes: "Prayer is something deeper than words. It is present in the soul before it has been formulated in words, and it abides in the soul after the last words of the prayer have passed over our lips. . . Prayer is a definite attitude of our hearts towards God, an attitude which he. . . immediately recognises as prayer, as an appeal to his heart. Whether it takes the form of words or not does not mean anything to God, only to ourselves."

Brother Ramon SSF in Praying the Jesus Prayer (1988): "We have seen that the Jesus Prayer involves body, mind and spirit – the whole of man. If the whole person is given to God in prayer, then it reflects the greatest commandment, [to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' (Mark 12.30)] The cosmic nature of the prayer means that the believer lives as a human being in solidarity with all other human beings, and with the animal creation, together with the whole created order... The Christian is well aware of the fact that the world is evil. There is a falseness and alienation which has distracted and infected the world, and men and women of prayer, by the power of the Name of Jesus, stand against the cosmic darkness, and enter into conflict with dark powers [Ephesians 6.12]... The power of the Jesus Prayer is the armour against the wiles of the devil, taking heed of the apostle's word: 'Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. [Ephesians 6.18]'"

As intercessors, all God asks of us is broken hearts - we do not need to find solutions to the prayers we pray, nor just the right words to frame them. God knows what is on our hearts (Romans 8.26-27) - we need only be honest and courageous enough to feel: feel the pain and the grief and the confusion and betrayal and despair the world feels, and to come before our Lord and Saviour with them on our hearts, and ask for God's mercy in the holy name of Jesus.

Hallesby again: "To pray in the name of Jesus is, in all likelihood, the deepest mystery of prayer. It is therefore exceedingly difficult for the Spirit. . . to explain this to us. . . there would be no hope for you if you were to pray in your own name. But listen again. You are to pray in the name of Jesus. It is for Jesus' sake that you are to receive what you ask for."

Of course the same thing applies to other contemplative prayer forms, the Rosary, centring prayer, the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing... I use the Jesus Prayer as an example not only because it is the way I pray myself, but because it is relatively easy to see how it works theologically, and so understand how the principle might work in the other forms.

Wouldn't you rather be a tax-collector?

There's a wonderful sermon on one of my favourite passages of Scripture, Luke 18.9-19, over at Affirming Catholicism. It's by The Most Revd Carlos Touche-Porter, Presiding Bishop of La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico & Bishop of Mexico.

In it he says:

'The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector is so well known to us that we risk missing its full force. It is an example of divine reversal: two men are contrasted not only by their behaviour but by the way each understands and describes himself. The judgement that is passed is based on self-assessment, not on the evaluation of another...

The Pharisee’s self-estimation is really a self-eulogy. While he may be living an upright life, he takes credit for his virtue and he claims superiority over others who may not be as compliant as he is. His idea of prayer is to offer God a list of all the things he’s against: extortion, injustice and adultery. He seems to be against everything and in favour of nothing.

The tax collector, on the other hand, acknowledges that justification comes from God. He is ashamed of what he has done, but he also knows what God is able to do in the face of his sinfulness and he asks for mercy...

A sad and shameful reality for the church is that many of her members have come to believe that being Christian means being against other people, or, to use the words of today’s Gospel, trusting in their own righteousness and despising others. They measure the world and those around them by their own standards rather than those of our loving and merciful God...

It is so easy for a tax collector to become one of the Pharisees, and to forget that, one day, we claimed and received God’s mercy. That same mercy we now deny others.

I believe that this is what’s behind our current problems in the Anglican Communion: many of the tax collectors of yesterday have become the Pharisees of today. They want today’s tax collectors excluded from the family of God and from the Lord’s table. They now deny others the same mercy and grace that was so freely given to them yesterday.

The faithful are being required not to associate with openly immoral church members (whatever that means), and I am afraid that the same is being required of Jesus; who, according to the Gospels, did exactly that; not one or seven times but seventy times seven. And recently, one province of our Communion has been brought to trial for trying to practice justice and inclusion for all; with actions, not words.

With all this in mind, it is now so easy for us to fall into despair, to lose hope and to conclude that there is no longer a future for the Anglican Communion or, at least, for us as members of it.

But that is a temptation that we can easily overcome by remembering the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ: “I will be with you always”. Or the words of Julian of Norwich: “God did not say: you will not be tested, you will not labour hard, you will not be troubled. But God did say: you will not be overcome”.

And finally, I would like to join my voice to that of Archbishop Terence Finlay of Canada, when reflecting on our current situation he wrote the following: “For a while the Anglican Communion will shudder like a great ship struggling through rough waters, but over time the Communion will find healing and reconciliation. We have been through rough waters before in the great controversies throughout our history. And although we’ll be a bit bruised and sore, I believe we will make it”.

Brothers and sisters, this is my prayer and my hope for our beloved Anglican Communion.'

What a man! How excellent it is to hear a voice not only of compassion (there are others preaching mercy, thank God), not only of deep Scriptural understanding (there are plenty of voices preaching from the Bible), but of profound hope. It is this hope, this mercy, and this willingness to do the hard and honest work of hermeneutics that has brought us through so many crises in our relatively short history, and has made the Anglican Church home for so many of today's "tax-collectors and sinners."

Given the choice, I think I'd rather be among the people Jesus hangs around with, than comfortable in my own righteousness...

Anglican Eucharistic Theology

I've discovered an excellent site entitled Anglican Eucharistic Theology, run by Revd Dr Brian Douglas, Residentiary Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, New South Wales (Australia) which does just what it says on the tin. It sets out to provide "access to some of the experience or phenomena of the Anglican Eucharistic Tradition through the presentation of case studies" from Cranmer through to Paul Zahl, with some philosophical and liturgical articles besides.

In the 20th and 21st Century section, as well as great studies on Evelyn Underhill and Michael Ramsey, there's a long and (as far as I am qualified to judge) representative article on Rowan Williams. The following passage will give you a feel of the quality of the work here, as well as being a good example of why I'm so fond of our present Archbishop as a theologian:

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In his 2002 book entitled Resurrection. Interpreting the Easter Gospel, Williams also discusses the Eucharist. Here he argues that the Eucharist is not simply a fellowship meal but a meal where “the wounded body and the shed blood are inescapably present” such that “we do not eucharistically remember a distant meal in Jerusalem, nor even a distant death: we are made ‘present to ourselves’ as people complicit in the betrayal and death of Jesus and yet still called and accepted, still ‘companions’ of Christ in the strict sense – those who break bread with him. The Eucharist recapitulates the Supper, the betrayal and the cross, but it does so as an Easter feast” (Williams, 2002: 34) where “the Church’s life is a perpetual Easter, and its mission the ‘universalising’ of Easter” (Williams, 2002: 35). The Eucharist then is spoken of in a realist way in which the Easter event is instantiated (universalised) in the celebration. It is really in this broadened sense of realism in the Eucharist that Williams addresses what he calls “the extremes of internalisation (the Eucharist as illustration of a doctrinal point) and depersonalisation (the Eucharist as the confection of a life-giving substance) are equally inadequate” (Williams, 2002: 51). The Eucharist is clearly more than either of these extremes which functions as “a human activity radically open to the creative activity of God in Jesus” which allows “the source-event, the mystery of cross and resurrection, to become present again, and so opens itself to the rich resource of that event” (Williams, 2002: 52). This suggests that the Eucharist is more than mere memory of a past and completed event, but is rather the place where the ‘source-event’ becomes present again, with all its power present in the Eucharist. Clearly this is anamnesis, used in the moderate realist sense so often found in Anglican eucharist theology. But on what basis does Williams see this as operating? He makes the point that: “If Jesus’ ministry had communicated to the apostles the possibility of human flesh carrying divine meaning, God being ‘enacted’ in the acts of man, the resurrection seals this discovery, vindicates and completes it” then “we speak of Jesus’ acts as bearing divine weight” (Williams, 2002: 98). But can
this mean that Williams is speaking in the fleshy sense of immoderate realism? This appears not to be so since he says:

“If we say that Jesus in his ministry ‘embodies’ the grace of God, we do not and cannot mean that the grace of God is identifiable with Jesus’ material and biological constitution. We are, rather, asserting that grace takes tangible form in what Jesus (as a material being) says and does in the world of material being. If we are to say of Jesus that he is God’s ‘body’ in the world, we must at once make it clear that we mean the life, the history, of Jesus, what he makes, the relations he sets up. It is absurd to think here of ‘body’ and ‘embodiment’ referring simply to Jesus’ physicality, although this is the necessary identifying centre for speaking of his acts and effects. Put in another way, it is not simply Jesus’ bare presence that is ‘gracious’, but Jesus present – as he most characteristically is – in words and deeds that make grace concrete, that create healing, forgiveness and fellowship.” (Williams, 2002: 99).

What Williams is speaking of here “is a paradigm instance of ‘embodied’ grace” (Williams, 2002: 99) which he explains as being:

“The means by which God is met is a transaction which perceptibly changes the prevailing human state of affairs so that the victims become guests, receivers of gifts. Thus the
shared table is the natural and indispensable extension of the ‘embodiment’ of grace in Jesus’ person: embodiment takes effect in the acts of the person.” (Williams, 2002: 99).'

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What I love about Williams is that however dense the theological expression, the sense of mystery, of Williams' own awe at what God does, just shines through the text. You can sense the Archbishop's goose-bumps in every sentence...

Wisdom

Wonderful post on The Dream of a Voyage:

Refiner and Purifier of Silver

Malachi 3:3 says: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study. That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.

As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot then she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver."

She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.

The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?"

He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that’s easy - when I see my image in it."

If today you are feeling the heat of the fire, remember that God has His eye on you and will keep watching you until He sees His image in you.

The way we pray...

A friend phoned first thing this morning, worried about how to pray for the situation in the Middle East, on the borders of Israel. We discussed the whole thing at length - I'd already replied to an email of his, with some background information I'd gleaned from Wikipedia about the conflict, and the various sides and factions involved. As we talked, the sense grew more and more acute, that we were wandering further down a blind alley. We'd never arrive at an answer, a formula for prayer, however much information we gathered, or however much we thought it through.

I suddenly remembered Julian of Norwich:

"Then the way we often pray came into my mind and how, through lack of knowing and understanding of the ways of love, we pester him with petitions. Then I saw truly that it gives more praise to God and more delight if we pray steadfast in love trusting his goodness, clinging to him by grace than if we ask for everything our thoughts can name. All our petitions fall short of God, and are too small to be worthy of him, and his goodness encompasses all that we can think to ask. The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God knowing that the goodness can reach right down to our lowest depths of need."

Showings (Long Text) Chapter 6

Or as Paul said in Romans 8.26-27, "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. "

Why is it so hard to remember this? Why do I, after all these years, still find myself feeling I need to know, to find answers, still speaking as though I imagine I have to inform and advise the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega, the I AM, for whom and through whom all things exist...?

Merton on Ephesians 6

Isn't it extraordinary how far ahead Thomas Merton thought sometimes? The following seems even more true in this age of the Internet than it did in the age of TV, when it was written:

'Though there are certainly more ways than one of preserving the freedom of the sons of God, the way to which I was called and which I have chosen is that of the monastic life.

Paul's view of the "elements" and the "powers of the air" was couched in the language of the cosmology of his day. Translated into the language of our own time, I would say these mysterious realities are to be sought where we least expect them, not in what is remote and mysterious, but in what is most familiar, what is near at hand, what is at our elbow all day long-what speaks or sings in our ear, and practically does our thinking for us. The "powers" and "elements" are precisely what stand between the world and Christ. It is they who stand in the way of reconciliation. It is they who, by influencing all our thinking and behavior in so many unsuspected ways, dispose us to decide for the world as against Christ, thus making reconciliation impossible.

Clearly the "powers" and the "elements," which in Paul's day dominated men's minds through pagan religion or through religious legalism, today dominate us in the confusion and the ambiguity of the Babel of tongues that we call mass-society. Certainly I do not condemn everything in the mass-media. But how does one stop to separate the truth from the half- truth, the event form the pseudo-event, reality from the manufactured image? It is in this confusion of images and myths, superstitions and ideologies that the "powers of the air" govern our thinking-even our thinking about religion! Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, to time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused?'

Thomas Merton. Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968: p. 150.

The little form of bread...

“O admirable heights and sublime lowliness! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! That the Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under the little form of bread! Look, brothers, at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before Him! Humble yourselves, as well, that you may be exalted by Him. Therefore, hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves so that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally”

Saint Francis, Letter to the Entire Order

Quoted in Saint of the Day for June 17

Archbishop Tutu: God is weeping

Dierdre Good, of Not Being a Sausage, posted a heads-up to the following quote from Desmond Tutu. I looked up a slightly fuller version than she posts - I can't add anything to that wonderful man's words, so without further preamble, here is what he said:


"Vanity Fair’s Africa 7/2007 issue features an interview of South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu by Brad Pitt. The engaging article can be found in the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair on page 96.

An excerpt on gay rights:

Brad Pitt: So certainly discrimination has no place in Christianity. There’s a big argument going on in America right now, on gay rights and equality.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: For me, I couldn’t ever keep quiet, I come from a situation where for a very long time people were discriminated against, made to suffer for something about which they could do nothing–their ethnicity. We were made to suffer because we were not white. Then, for a very long time in our church, we didn’t ordain women, and we were penalizing a huge section of humanity for something about which they could do nothing–their gender. And I’m glad that now the church has changed all that. I’m glad that apartheid has ended. I could not for any part of me be able to keep quiet, because people were being penalized, ostracized, treated as if they were less than human, because of something they could do nothing to change–their sexual orientation. For me, I can’t imagine the Lord that I worship, this Jesus Christ, actually concurring with the persecution of a minority that is already being persecuted. The Jesus who I worship is a Jesus who was forever on the side of those who were being clobbered, and he got into trouble precisely because of that. Our church, the Anglican Church, is experiencing a very, very serious crisis. It is all to do with human sexuality. I think God is weeping. He is weeping that we should be spending so much energy, time resources on this subject at a time when the world is aching."

Worship

Kathryn, at Good in Parts, has a very important post on the subject of worship, which I'd encourage you to click over and read.

As her conclusion, she has found another wonderful Evelyn Underhill quote, this time from Worship (1936):

"At one end worship is lost in God and is seen to be the substance of eternal life, so that all our attempts to penetrate its mystery must end in acknowledgement of defeat; at the other it broadens out to cover and inform the whole of man's responses to reality, his total Godward life, with its myriad graded forms of expression, some so crude and some so lovely, some so concrete and some so otherworldly but all so pathetic in their childishness. Here we obtain a clue to the real significance of those rituals and ceremonies... which express the deep human conviction that none of the serial events and experiences of human life are rightly met unless they are brought into a relationship with the Transcendent."

Astonishing, isn't it, how a discussion of what for so many people is confined to the area of music in church, or liturgics, actually "broadens out to cover and inform the whole of man's responses to reality..." and so brings us into reach of Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God, and of the Prayer of the Heart, the practice of the Jesus Prayer as unceasing prayer (1 Thessalonians 5.17) where the prayer, coming over time to be prayed without conscious volition, forms the means by which all "the serial events and experiences of human life are... brought into a relationship with the Transcendent."

Worship is so much more than is dreamed of my most of our philosophies, which may be why our Lord said that our worship must be "in spirit and in truth," as opposed to what we know, intellectually, or, superstitiously, what we don't know.

Still thinking about how to live in simplicity...

I read on Saint of the Day about the life of Orlando Catanii, and it seemed to me that he had a great deal to show us about simplicity, and in fact about what it is to be a Franciscan Tertiary. The entry reads:

An unexpected encounter with St. Francis of Assisi in 1213 was to forever change—and enrich—the life of Count Orlando of Chiusi.

On the day a festival was being organized for a huge throng, St. Francis, already well known for his sanctity, delivered a dramatic address on the dangers of worldly pleasures. One of the guests, Orlando (also known as Roland) was so taken by Francis' words that he sought out the saint for advice on how best to lead a life pleasing to God.

A short time later, Francis visited Count Orlando in his own palace, located at the foot of Mount La Verna. Francis spoke again of the dangers of a life of wealth and comfort. The words prompted Orlando to rearrange his life entirely according to the principles outlined by Francis. Furthermore, he resolved to share his wealth by placing at Francis' disposal all of Mount La Verna, which belonged to Orlando. Francis, who found the mountain's wooded recesses and many caves and ravines especially suitable for quiet prayer, gratefully accepted the offer. Orlando immediately had a convent as well as a church built there; later, many chapels were added. In 1224, two years before the death of Francis, Mount La Verna was the location where Francis received the holy wounds of Christ.

In return for his generous gift, Orlando desired only to be received into the Third Order and to have St. Francis as his spiritual director. Under Francis' guidance, Orlando completely detached himself from worldly goods. He zealously performed acts of charity as a Christian nobleman. After his happy death Orlando was laid to rest in the convent church on Mount La Verna.

Even Francis, Lady Poverty’s favorite knight, needed a suitable place to pray. Captivated by Francis’ preaching, Orlando restructured his life. One of the possessions he parted with was Mt. La Verna, which he offered to the Little Poor Man. There Francis found the solitude he sought. In one mountainside cave, he was branded with Christ’s own wounds. We may not be as wealthy as Orlando, but we have enough to spare. Only God can know who in Lady Poverty’s realm will be nurtured in sanctity because we imitate Orlando in generosity.

Simplicity, put another way...

Vicki K Black has a marvellous post at Episcopal Cafe: Speaking to the Soul , where she quotes Evelyn Underhill:

God gives Himself mainly along two channels: through the soul’s daily life and circumstances and through its prayer. In both that soul must always be ready for Him; wide open to receive Him, and willing to accept and absorb without fastidiousness that which is given, however distasteful and unsuitable it may seem. For the Food of Eternal Life is mostly plain bread; and though it has indeed all sweetness and all savour for those who accept it with meekness and love, there is nothing in it to attract a more fanciful religious taste. All life’s vicissitudes, each grief, trial or sacrifice, each painful step in self-knowledge, every opportunity of love or renunciation and every humiliating fall, have their place here. All give, in their various ways and disguises, the heavenly Food. A sturdy realism is the mark of this divine self-imparting, and the enabling grace of those who receive.

From Abba by Evelyn Underhill (Morehouse-Barlow, 1981).

This Is the Part

Just found a wonderful poem over at Shannon's Finding Grace Within.

I won't spoil it by posting bits of it here - just head on over and read it, now! It should be inserted as a foreword in every textbook on listening, and read at the beginning of every listening skills course...

I've just discovered Shannon's blog, by the way - great stuff - should be in everyone's feed reader. I only wish I lived near enough to invite her for a coffee!

Simplicity

We Franciscans talk a lot about simplicity, and sometimes people are not quite sure what we're getting at. Occasionally, I don't think we're all that sure - I know I've often wondered whether I really knew what I was talking about.

In our Third Order Principles the Third Aim is to live simply, and it goes on to speak of Francis' own vision of Lady Poverty, and how we in the Third Order "show ourselves true followers of Christ and of St Francis by our readiness to live simply and to share with others." And it's true that this lies very close to the heart of what being a Franciscan actually is.

And yet, every time I read the Third Aim, I find myself looking for the passion with which Francis took Lady Poverty as his bride, and not quite finding it. I had wondered whether, at least in my own case, that didn't mean that the Third Order was somehow second best; that I had somewhere along the line missed my vocation to the First Order, where I would, I hoped, have found this passion I've always, somewhere in my heart, longed for.

As so often happens, Thomas Merton cuts through the haze: "Give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone. For there is only one thing that can satisfy love and reward it, and that is You alone." (New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961: p. 45)

And that, for me, is what lies at the core of all this thinking about simplicity, as in a sense it lies at the core of penitence. What is required is just to remove what gets between God and myself. And what does get between us? Stuff. Whether it's material stuff or emotional stuff or spiritual stuff, it's my stuff. God doesn't deal in stuff: he deals in himself. He is what he has to give us, and as Merton says, only he will satisfy our final longing.

Simplicity, then, is just removing stuff from between God and me, leaving me free to love him, and want him; free to be open to him. As Jesus said to Martha, "you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing..."

Vulnerability

In a wonderful post entitled "On open-heartedness," Kelly says:

"But, the world [she's referring to Yeats' "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams..."] treads as it will regardless of our sensitivity. Should we then, close up and refuse to love humanity or be enthralled by the wonder of the work of God? No, all the more should we open our heart to love, and beauty, and even pain. Give everything, love all, no matter how ugly or painful or awful. Love every person in every image of war and pain that comes our way; love the victim and the perpetrator, embrace it all, as God does.

For there, and there only, is a better dream, and all the cloths of heaven."

Oh absolutely!

To me, the way of prayer is the way of this totally defenceless vulnerability... as a friend of mine once put it, true intercessors have less layers of skin than other people. To stand before God completely open-hearted and open-handed, weeping unashamedly, is really the only option left to us.

All this reminds me, yet again, of the words of St Isaac of Nineveh, the 7th century solitary. I've quoted these in this blog at least twice before, but I'm not about to apologise...

An elder was once asked, "What is a merciful heart?" He replied:

"It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God."

Random Facts or Habits

Missy, over at Missy's Big Fish Stories, has just tagged me for this meme. It's an unusual sort of a thing, where you have to abide by these rules:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So here goes, I guess:

1. I am half Australian. My mother was a painter and sculptor who came to the Old Country just before World War II, and, after many adventures, married an RAF Squadron Leader. Result: me.
2. I have had a very chequered career one way or another: I've been an art student, a musician, a bookseller, a full-time writer and part-time small-press publisher, a dairy herdsman, and a computer person. If I've missed any bits out, then they're odd bits of holiday work, or things I did when short of money...
3. I have a thing about women's eyes. And voices. Some people reckon they're always taken with legs, or various other bits - for me it's eyes. Or voices. And eyes...
   
4. Jan has both attributes to an unsettling degree. It was nearly three years from the time we first met till we were married, and for most of that time we didn't see each other, but I just couldn't get her out of my head from the first day she walked into a Creative Writing class I was teaching at Leicester University. Still can't.
5. I have another thing, about Fender guitars. I've played all kinds over the years, but always come back to them. The Telecaster, the Stratocaster and the Jazz Bass are three of the most perfect musical instruments to come out of the 20th century. Nothing can replace them.
6. I was first introduced to the Jesus Prayer in 1978, at a very broken and painful time in my life, by a wonderful monk at Willen Priory, Fr Francis Horner SSM; everything that has happened since has somehow involved that prayer. However far I've wandered, however dark things have at times become, the Prayer has followed me, and brought me home.
7. I first encountered the Anglican Franciscans in 1984, at the Jarrow 1300 celebrations. At the time I knew next to nothing of the order, but there was something about these guys that tugged at my heart in a way I couldn't understand. It took me the best part of twenty years to find out. Slow, some would call me. I wouldn't argue...
8. I wish I could sing. I know the notes I should be singing - I could play them - and I can (sort of) sing along with others. But hold a tune? Easier for me to hold a hyperactive eel.

Now I just have to think of 8 people to tag. H'mm. Let's see...

Lutheran Chik because I always look out for her posts first every morning on my feed reader.

Kelly because she and I play comment tennis every so often, and she's a woman after my own heart in so many ways.

Bigbulkyanglican because he understands guitars.

Kathryn because, I suppose, she manages to be both guileless and profound, often at the same time...

Padre Mickey - the best hagiographer in all the blogosphere. And he plays bass.

Charles of New Haven because anyone whose image of God is "dark, quiet, peaceful, and cavernous" must have at least 8 very remarkable things about them.

Carl McColman because with a journey like his he must have far more than eight...

Claire Joy because, as well as having so appropriate a name in religion, she just has such a big heart that I'd love to know what her eight things might turn out to be!

Remember - like Missy said, it's entirely optional!

Merton and Brueggemann c/o John Santic...

There's a fascinating post over at John Santic's Toward Hope, where he talks of his thoughts on reading Merton on the way to work, and Brueggemann on the way home! Do go and read what he has to say, it's important. I've left rather a long comment there, so I shan't repeat too much of my own reactions here - just to say that John has highlighted for me the tensions inherent in trying to live the Gospel, tensions between the interior and exterior life that can be the source of such pain and confusion, but are so, literally, vital to our Christian life.

This is important: I don't think, till I read John's post just now, I had realised quite how important. More of this later!

Er, sorry...

It's been far too long since I posted anything here, and Lulu (the cat) is sitting on my lap nuzzling my forearm, so I thought I'd better introduce you to my delightful new blog discovery, Missy, over at Missy's Big Fish Stories.

She's an excellent photographer, and livens things up with lots of examples, and has some wonderful and profound things to say in the lightest and most engaging of ways. If I go on reading her, I may even learn to take myself a little less seriously. "May," I said, before you go getting too excited...

Beetle on peony, by Missy:

Late as usual...

I've just read a really wonderful post, a homily by Jane Redmont, over at Acts of Hope, on the Visitation.

"Remember what Mary says in this Gospel: God is doing mighty things for lowly people. A woman will be called blessed forever, though she lives in a world where men rule. The mighty are deposed from their thrones. The poor and the hungry are not just satisfied, they are heard and remembered.

I think this woman is talking about a revolution."

Yes! Oh thank you Jane! No one I've read has put it quite so well...

Emergent, am I?

Nancy, over at Along the Way, has this fascinating link to a Theological Worldview quiz.

Like her, I turned out to be an Emergent / Postmodern! Only slight problem is, I'm 18% fundamentalist, which is a bit of a shock, I must say...

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern, You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 89% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 79% Roman Catholic 75% Neo orthodox 68% Classical Liberal 57% Charismatic/Pentecostal 54% Reformed Evangelical 39% Modern Liberal 32% Fundamentalist 18% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

I know I ought to know the man in the picture, Nancy, only my mind's gone blank. Funny thing is, I'm bald and grey bearded, too... If this is an essential qualification for male emergent / postmoderns, what is the equivalent requirement for females???

The prayers of the Saints...

"Lady, when on that night I left the Island that was once your England, your love went with me, although I could not know it, and could not make myself aware of it. It was your love, your intercession for me before God that was preparing the seas before my ship, laying open the way for me to another country. I was not sure where I was going and I could not see what I would do when I got to New York. But you saw further and clearer than I and you opened the seas before my ship whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing for me to be my rescue and my shelter and my home. And when I thought there was no God and no love and no mercy, you were leading me all the while into the midst of His love and His mercy and taking me, without my knowing anything about it, to the house that would hide me in the secret of His Face."

Thomas Merton. The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt, Brace: pp. 129-130.

However we understand the way this happens, each of us is so much more dependent than we know on the prayers of others. Our ontological status, if you like, as members of the Body of Christ is conditioned by the love and longing of other members, whether alive and known to us, or long since present with our Lord in glory - that "cloud of witnesses" in Hebrews 12:1.

I know very well just how much of my own path to "a place I had never dreamed of," my very life in fact, has depended upon others, some of whom I know and might speak of one day, and some I know I'll meet one day with delighted astonishment, but whom I have no inkling here on earth...

Thanks be to God for their faithfulness, when mine has so often failed...

Bank Holiday

Strange feeling, it being a bank holiday, somehow. Everything has gone on hold, and even the weather is caught between the chilly rain that has poured without a break for the last 36 hours, and the clear spring sunshine that preceded it. Ah - it was looking over my shoulder, and has decided to rain again...

Today somehow feels like a kind of an examen day, but in a gentle, unthreatening, understanding way. All the colours are soft, not muted but, I don't know, harmonious in some sense. God's hand is light, full of grace...

Archbishop Ndungane's speech (link)

If you read one post today, read this one, at Grandmere Mimi's. Especially if you are prone to talk about what "the African Bishops" believe!

My brother's keeper

"The person is defined in terms of freedom, hence in terms of responsibility also: responsibility to other persons, responsibility for other persons. To put it in concrete terms, the Christian is not only one who seeks the expansion and development of his own individuality and the satisfaction of his most legitimate natural needs but one who recognizes himself responsible for the good of others, for their own temporal fulfilment, and ultimately for their eternal salvation. Hence, the Christian person reaches maturity with the realization that each one of us is indeed his "brother's keeper," and that if men are suffering and dying in Asia or Africa, other men in Europe and America are summoned to self-judgement before the bar of conscience to see whether, in fact, some choice or neglect on their own part has had a part in this suffering and this dying, which otherwise may seem so strange and remote. For today the whole world is bound tightly together by economic, cultural and sociological ties which make us all, to some extent, responsible for what happens to others on the far side of the earth. Man is now not only a social being; his social nature transcends national and regional limits, and whether we like it or not, we must think in terms of one human family, one world."

Thomas Merton. Love and Living. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart, editors. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979: 152-153

This is so central to being a Christian, it seems to me. With the current attention to global warming, and other ecological factors, what we have known spiritually for so many centuries is becoming unarguable scientific fact. In fact it rather amuses me, in a grim kind of a way very often, how, as science grows ever more sophisticated it proves, rather than disproving, things that had been known spiritually for long years before the idea of "science" as a discipline in itself ever came to be!

St. Rita of Cascia

St. Rita of Cascia
(1381-1457)


Like Elizabeth Ann Seton, Rita of Cascia was a wife, mother, widow and member of a religious community. Her holiness was reflected in each phase of her life.

Born at Roccaporena in central Italy, Rita wanted to become a nun but was pressured at a young age into marrying a harsh and cruel man. During her 18-year marriage, she bore and raised two sons. After her husband was killed in a brawl and her sons had died, Rita tried to join the Augustinian nuns in Cascia. Unsuccessful at first because she was a widow, Rita eventually succeeded.

Over the years, her austerity, prayerfulness and charity became legendary. When she developed wounds on her forehead, people quickly associated them with the wounds from Christ's crown of thorns. She meditated frequently on Christ's passion. Her care for the sick nuns was especially loving. She also counselled lay people who came to her monastery.

Beatified in 1626, Rita was not canonized until 1900. She has acquired the reputation, together with St. Jude, as a saint of impossible cases. Many people visit her tomb each year.

I love people like St Rita, who came up against seemingly impossible odds, and just got on with it. It is so encouraging to think of her when things seem to be just wrong, when it is so easy to imagine an ideal world in which to live out our calling, a world so different from the one in which we seem trapped by some malignity of fate. But that world does not exist. An "If only" approach to holiness never quite gets underway, never produces the fruit that God longs for in us, and that we know, somewhere deep down, is the only thing that will ever finally satisfy us.

Rita became holy because she made choices that reflected her Baptism and her growth as a disciple of Jesus. Her overarching, lifelong choice was to cooperate generously with God's grace, but many small choices were needed to make that happen; and few of those choices seem to have made in ideal circumstances - not even when Rita had become an Augustinian nun...

This account of her life is derived from the entry at Saint of the Day

Abject blogospheric apologies...!

Poking around on Technorati, I discovered that way back last August Charles of New Haven tagged me for a book meme. Brother Charles I'm so sorry - I missed your post!

Anyway, being such an absent-minded procrastinator, I have to believe in better late than never; so, here's my reply (though as this is such ancient news, I'll forbear from tagging anyone else!)

1. One book that changed my life

Oh this has to be Per Olof Sjogren's The Jesus Prayer. Back in 1978 Fr Francis Horner SSM introduced me to this wonderful little book, and I've never been quite the same since!

2. One book that you've read more than once.

Other than the above? Well, loads. I'm an avid re-reader, but looking at my shelf I can see that one of the tattiest is Richard Foster's Money Sex & Power. Terrific book - the classical monastic disciplines of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience re-applied to contemporary out-of-cloister life. Should be required reading for the Third Order!

3. A desert island book.

This is hard, but I guess I'd have to go along with Charles on this, and (assuming, like in Desert Island Discs, I already have a Bible) I'd have to take my TSSF Manual, just in order to keep sane with the daily Office.

4. One book that made you laugh.

I'm kind of torn here between James Herriot and Phil Rickman. I think I'll have Midwinter of the Spirit, not because the plot's remotely funny (it's usually shelved under Horror...) but because I keep laughing either with glee at the utterly irresistible character of Revd. Merrily Watkins, Diocesan Exorcist, or with delighted recognition of my old stomping ground, the Herefordshire hinterland.

5. One book that made you cry.

Annie Dillard makes me cry more tears per chapter than anyone else I know. Which one? Oh, honestly. Only one? Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for sheer terror and celebration. Try this for size:

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am ageing and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down..."

6. One book you wish you had written.

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes. Just glorious! See a couple of posts back... What a man to have as an Archbishop. For all the brickbats flying around the poor man's head, I feel very safe in that particular pair of hands.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

Mercifully, it's long out of print, but Arnold Lunn and Garth Lean, The Cult of Softness. I don't know if I ought even to mention it, in case some religious-right hard man decides to reprint it, with a told-you-so foreword.

8. One book you are currently reading.

To make up for the fact that I'm not going to do the final question (tagging people) I'll have two here, I think! Leslie J Francis, Church Watch - Christianity in the Countryside (quite as scary as any Phil Rickman ;-) and Rowan Clare Williams' beautiful little study of the Franciscan life, A Condition of Complete Simplicity. I guess I could have put this one down under question 2, since this'll be the third or fourth time I've read it.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.

I toyed with the idea of listing one or more of the great spiritual classics I've been meaning to get around to one day before it's too late, but actually I'll be honest. I really want to read The Ambient Century: from Mahler to Moby - the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age by Mark Prendergast. Looks just up my street!

And that's that I think. Phew! Fascinating exercise. I only wish, Charles, that I'd done it when you tagged me... once again, sorry for the inattention!

Thinking about The Mercy Site

I've been thinking about The Mercy Site. It's been around a while, in Web terms, probably nearly seven years now. While it is still attracting a share of visitors, and while it is still hosted for free by the remarkably steadfast Milestonenet people, who seem to tolerate its consuming (according to Alexa) some 90-odd% of their traffic, I've been wondering.

I've been watching the steady flowering of what some people call Web 2.0 - online applications like Blogger, Netvibes, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, not to mention all the Flickr, eBay, del.icio.us thingies there are around. I've also been thoroughly enjoying the experience of keeping this blog. Not the least important things about that are the extraordinary ease of updating stuff with this Whizzy-WYG blog editor they provide, compared with even the simple, simple HTML of The Mercy Site; and the possibilities raised by the collaborative nature of comments.

I've also noticed one or two odd things in the blogosphere recently: things that aren't blogs per se, but aren't quite old school websites either. This tendency appears among experimental musicians, I find: the EMC Blog would be a fair example. Blog novels would be another example, but I'll let you Google those for yourself. There's some weird stuff out there: don't say I didn't warn you... Contrariwise, I've been impressed with sites like A Church Near You, which incorporate blog-like elements, with preformatted pages which can be modified using some kind of online editor application.

A blog-site (or site-blog) like that would be flexible and responsive, could be almost an online extension of what one was thinking about at the time, and could have a degree of collaborative input through (moderated) comments. It would be a separate entity to The Mercy Blog, and would borrow the blog novel idea of posts-as-chapters. It would, in other words, be an online, continually evolving - or perpetual Beta, for you Web 2.0 geeks - book about prayer.

I could give it a try - some of the best bits from The Mercy Site would provide a framework, and the endless generosity of Blogger a platform...

If any of you folks reading this have any thoughts, do post a comment!

St. Theophilus of Corte... and Rowan Williams

St. Theophilus of Corte, 1676-1740


I love this guy - more and more God seems to be bringing people like this to my attention. I think he may be trying to tell me something...

Anyway, the following account of his life is derived from the entry at Saint of the Day:

If we expect saints to do marvellous things continually and to leave us many memorable quotes, we are bound to be disappointed with St. Theophilus. The mystery of God's grace in a person's life, however, has a beauty all its own.

Theophilus was born in Corsica of rich and noble parents. As a young man he entered the Franciscans and soon showed his love for solitude and prayer. After admirably completing his studies, he was ordained and assigned to a retreat house near Subiaco. Inspired by the austere life of the Franciscans there, he founded other such houses in Corsica and Tuscany. Over the years, he became famous for his preaching as well as his missionary efforts.

Though he was always somewhat sickly, Theophilus generously served the needs of God's people in the confessional, in the sickroom and at the graveside. Worn out by his labours, he died on June 17, 1740. He was canonized in 1930.

There is something in the lives of all those we remember as saints that prompts them to find ever more selfless ways of responding to God's grace. As time went on, Theophilus gave more and more single hearted service to God and to God's sons and daughters. Studying the lives of the saints will make no sense unless we are thus drawn to live as generously as they did. Their holiness can never substitute for our own.

Francis used to say, "Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up to now we have made little or no progress" (1 Celano, #193).

Thinking about St Theophilus, and about Francis' remark, reminds me strongly of what I've been reading in Rowan Williams' wonderful little book Silence and Honey Cakes, where he speaks of the Desert Fathers' and Mothers' insistence on what they called nepsis, watchfulness. The same idea seems to be present there: our attentive awareness of ourselves, necessarily of our own sinfulness, turns us not inwards, but towards Christ and towards our sisters and brothers, whom we love with an ever-increasing openness and solidarity.

++Rowan has a passage I simply can't resist quoting in full:

"What is hard for us to grasp is that they [the desert nuns and monks] know with utter seriousness the cost to them of their sin and selfishness and vanity, yet know that God will heal and accept. That they know the latter doesn't in any way diminish the intensity with which they know the former; and their knowledge of the former is what gives them their almost shocking tenderness towards other sinners."

"Almost shocking tenderness..." Wouldn't that do as well for a description of our Lord's attitude to the sinners he encountered during his years on earth? (And my heart tells me that if it was true then, it is even more true now.)

If only we could truly live like that! Of course it wouldn't make us popular among the self-righteous, any more than it did for Jesus, but it would make possible what Rowan Williams calls "becoming a means of reconciliation and healing" for our neighbour - and that surely is what every one of us is called to do, one way or another...

Ascension Day!

Wonderful Ascension Day Eucharist over at Holy Trinity, West Lulworth this evening - Bob the Rural Dean took the service, assisted by our own brand new, freshly licensed Priest-in-Charge, Rhona! She may read this, so I shan't embarrass her by saying what a blessing she's going to be, and what an answer to prayer she is...

We sang (well, the choir sang, and the rest of us tried valiantly to follow in the printed music) a beautiful setting, The Lulworth Mass, written specially for the church by Derek Bourgeois. Really a glorious setting - but elementary it is not, Dr Watson.

Coming back through West and then East Lulworth it struck me yet again what pleasant places our boundary lines have fallen in, to mangle Ps. 16. The Isle of Purbeck in spring is one of the loveliest places on earth. Whatever did we do to deserve to live in such a place?

God is very good... and if our Risen and Ascended Lord is leading the way, it's only going to get better on the other side of the river, "Further in and further up!" as Aslan said...

Paschal's spare moments...

In Paschal's lifetime the Spanish empire in the New World was at the height of its power, though France and England were soon to reduce its influence. The 16th century has been called the Golden Age of the Church in Spain, for it gave birth to Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Peter of Alcantara, Francis Solano and Salvator of Horta.

Paschal's Spanish parents were poor and pious. Between the ages of seven and 24 he worked as a shepherd and began a life of mortification. He was able to pray on the job and was especially attentive to the church bell which rang at the Elevation during Mass. Paschal had a very honest streak in him. He once offered to pay owners of crops for any damage his animals caused!

In 1564 Paschal joined the Friars Minor and gave himself wholeheartedly to a life of penance. Though he was urged to study for the priesthood, he chose to be a brother. At various times he served as porter, cook, gardener and official beggar.

Paschal was careful to observe the vow of poverty. He would never waste any food or anything given for the use of the friars. When he was porter and took care of the poor coming to the door, he developed a reputation for great generosity. The friars sometimes tried to moderate his liberality!

Paschal spent his spare moments praying before the Blessed Sacrament. In time many people sought his wise counsel. People flocked to his tomb immediately after his burial; miracles were reported promptly. In 1690 Paschal was canonized; in 1897 he was named patron of Eucharistic congresses and societies.

Courtesy of Saint of the Day

We have all of us so much to learn from people like Paschal. To give such priority to waiting on our Lord changes everything. We are no longer living for ourselves, in whatever strength we can find within ourselves, or whatever we can absorb, parasitically, from others; we are living for God, in the limitless supply of his grace, and our lives will become signs and beacons to everyone we encounter. Every day I spend outside this way is wasted. Do pray for me, really, please, that I will remember that, and listen; that when I turn to the right or when I turn to the left, I will hear a word behind me, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

"Teach me..."

Just the most wonderful prayer from Thomas Merton:

"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names. Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are.

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hand to work always in my life. I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen."

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. (Journals, volume 4). Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. Harper SanFrancisco, 1996: pp. 46-47

"The glory of the crucified..."

Kathryn, at Good in Parts, quotes Fr Rick, quoting ++Michael Ramsey (!):

"In your service of others, you will feel, you will care, you will be hurt, you will have your heart broken. It is doubtful if any of us can do anything at all until we have been very much hurt, and until our hearts have been very much broken. And this is because God’s gift to us is the glory of the crucified - being sensitive to the pain and sorrow that exists in so much of the world."

She reminded me, yet again, of the words of St Isaac of Nineveh, the solitary, and sometime reluctant Bishop, of the 7th century AD. I've quoted these in this blog before, but I don't suppose this is the last time either...

An elder was once asked, "What is a merciful heart?" He replied:

"It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God."

The Antiphon in our own Franciscan Third Order Office, quoting Galatians 6:14, says it in a slightly different way, but it amounts to the same thing:

"Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."

Sometimes I feel like the the folk Kathryn is thinking of when she describes her group at the Cathedral, who might feel more than a bit worried at the use of ++Michael's quote as a marketing gambit. At our LPA Commissioning last night, I had the same thought. I hadn't read Kathryn's post then, but I thought, for the nth time, "What am I getting myself into?" (Actually, it's more like, "Letting myself be gotten into," but you get the drift...)

Perhaps my question's just been answered...

Serving in obscurity...

Some Franciscan saints led fairly public lives; St. Catharine of Bologna (1413-1463) represents the ones who served the Lord in obscurity. Catharine, born in Bologna, was related to the nobility in Ferrara and was educated at court there. She received a liberal education at the court and developed some interest and talent in painting. In later years as a Poor Clare, Catharine sometimes did manuscript illumination and also painted miniatures.

At the age of 17, she joined a group of religious women in Ferrara. Four years later the whole group joined the Poor Clares in that city. Jobs as convent baker and portress preceded her selection as novice mistress.

In 1456 she and 15 other sisters were sent to establish a Poor Clare monastery in Florence. As abbess Catharine worked to preserve the peace of the new community. Her reputation for holiness drew many young women to the Poor Clare life. She was canonized in 1712.

Appreciating Catharine's life in a Poor Clare monastery may be hard for us. "It seems like such a waste," we may be tempted to say. Through prayer, penance and charity to her sisters, Catharine drew close to God.

There is just something about the idea of "serving the Lord in obscurity" that seems so right. To cling tightly to our crucified Saviour in hidden places, like ivy; to go on without asking for rewards, or recognition, or thanks, just serving. That's real contentment, real joy: to live for him, and not for what he might do for me. How I long to be like that - how far from it I am! God grant me the grace truly and simply to do what I am given to do...

(St Catharine's details courtesy of Saint of the Day)

Astonishing post...

+Martin, of Argyll and the Isles, has the most extraordinary, liberating, glorious post here. I shan't even attempt to precis it - you must just go and read it, without delay, and do what it says!

Be blessed - be very blessed...

More Eremos music...

There's some more Eremos music online at Download.com. It's called 'Arne' - rather unusual stuff, being based on a land art installation by my friend Hannelie Grobler at the Arne Nature Reserve here in Dorset. I took a series of photographs of this last year, and they have haunted me ever since. Listening to some tracks by CP McDill (Akashic Crow's Nest, Djinnestan) set me thinking, so I took the .jpg files of the photographs, and using some excellent image synthesiser software developed by Victor Khashchanskiy in Russia, I digitally converted these to .wav files. These sound files were then imported into the soft studio, and with a little extra work using LADSPA plug-ins, formed the underlying sound structure of the piece.

I hope you like it!