St. Clare

Today is St. Clare's Day. She is my very favourite Franciscan person, I think. There's a long article this month on the online St. Anthony Messenger site, and I've taken the liberty of extracting a few bits, since they are so much better than anything I could write myself:

Within each of us is the potential to be a light focusing attention on God's presence in our world. Clare of Assisi's life reveals just how much light she shed.

As a friend and as cofounder of the Franciscan movement, she supported Francis as he discerned God's message for himself and his followers. Together with her sisters, she wrote the first Rule written for religious women by a woman. She modeled the ability for the authority or power of a group to be held by the entire group (collegiality).

This year, the Franciscan family throughout the world celebrates the 750th anniversary of Clare's death in August 1253. Her life continues to speak to all of us. She challenges us to incorporate simplicity, singleness of purpose and unity within families and communities into the complexity of our 21st-century lives...

Clare was born in 1193 in Assisi, a small town in the scenic Umbrian Valley of Italy. She was born of nobility, the oldest child of Ortulana and Favarone di Offreduccio.

At the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, Italy was a cauldron of political and military strife. Society was divided into two groups: the maiores and minores. The maiores were the nobility. The minores were former serfs, who had become merchants, craftsmen and field workers. These two groups were continually fighting for power among themselves.

In her early youth, Clare was exiled to Perugia. While the men in the family were off fighting their wars, the women chose to live as penitents. Ortulana, along with her daughters, as well as other women among Clare's family and friends, were fasting, praying, bringing food to the poor and visiting prisoners.

This time of suffering and exile became a time of spiritual formation. Many of the women living with Clare in Perugia, including her mother and sisters, later became some of Clare's first followers in San Damiano.

In 1205, Clare's family returned to Assisi. Francis had already begun his conversion. He had publicly renounced his father and started rebuilding San Damiano. In 1208, he began preaching. Clare's cousin Rufino became one of his early followers.

Clare's household had to have experienced the stir that Francis was causing. An eyewitness, cited in the Acts of the Process of Canonization [of Clare], said that, during this time, Clare went to hear Francis preach, gave him some money to rebuild churches and to feed the poor, and arranged to talk to him in private.

Clare and Francis were both experiencing God breaking into their lives, changing them and calling them to give themselves over to God. Both were facing unknowns and both were probably frightened and unsure of themselves. It must have been a comforting grace to meet a kindred spirit and to encounter another human being who was experiencing the same call and facing the same doubts.

Clare's sister Beatrice tells us (in the document of the canonization process) that Francis first initiated the visit with Clare. Some speculation suggests that women were asking to join his movement and Francis needed a strong woman to lead the others...

Francis and the brothers received Clare on Palm Sunday night at the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels (the Portiuncula) in the year 1212. Shortly after this, she was taken to San Paolo, a Benedictine monastery in Bastia.

The men in Clare's family were not happy with her following Francis. Their power and wealth were diminishing with the changes in society. Clare was beautiful and they had hoped that her marriage would bring prestige and continued wealth into the family. They followed her to San Paolo with every intention of bringing her home.

Clare instead held on to the altar and claimed sanctuary. She had made her choice. She would never turn back.

Clare's sister Catherine, soon to be called Agnes, joined Clare. The two lived for a while with a group of Beguines (13th-century women under vows) in Sant'Angelo in Panzo until Francis brought them to the church of San Damiano. There, the Lord gave them sisters and their community grew quickly...

Clare's community was to be vastly different from the monastic communities of her time. The sisters were to live poorly without large land holdings. Like Francis, their Rule would be to embrace the gospel form of life. They would all be of equal rank, and all decisions affecting their life would be made by all of them.

They would have an abbess, but she would consider herself "the servant of the sisters" and she would lead more by her example of virtue than by instruction or admonition.

Clare was the perfect follower of Francis. She understood his message and would spend her entire life making it a lived reality. Her life and the lives of the early sisters, however, were not easy ones.

Francis died young. Clare outlived him by 27 years. She remained firm and kept the ideal alive, despite Francis' absence and the dissension among his brothers. The Church would see the poverty of her life as too difficult. She negotiated with popes and worked to get her Rule approved until the day before she died—August 10, 1253...

Clare was a woman of prayer, and her entire life was lived in trust of the God whom she knew loved her. She needed little material wealth because she trusted that God would care for all her physical needs. God never let her down. It takes deep faith to live so, but anyone who has tried to live dependent on God learns quickly the joy of simplicity.

Clutter blocks freedom and blurs perception. Living simply helps one develop an attitude or willingness to be emptied. One quickly learns what is important. Those who live simply learn to live with open hands: to appreciate what is given but to be equally willing to let go, when letting go is what is needed.

Contemplative living was Clare's reason for living simply. One needs to be poor to have the space to meet God. Clare, by her way of life, witnessed to others the one thing necessary and found herself united with all people in sharing her need for and reliance on God...

Clare wrote four letters to Agnes of Prague, the queen of Bohemia, who became a Poor Clare. (Clare's sister Agnes is known as Agnes of Assisi.) In her third letter to Agnes, she writes, "The soul of a faithful person is greater than heaven itself, since the heavens and the rest of creation can not contain the creator and only the faithful soul is God's dwelling place and throne. As the glorious Virgin of Virgins carried Jesus materially, so we too, by following in her footprints, especially those of poverty and humility, can without a doubt, always carry Him spiritually in our chaste and virginal bodies, holding the one by whom all things are held together, possessing that which in comparison with the other transitory possessions of the world, we will possess more securely."

Taking these words to Agnes seriously would change the way people look at themselves and others. The answer lies within. The realization of this "indwelling of God" calls for a respect and an appreciation for who we are. Clare taught her sisters to see themselves as temples of God, mirrors of Christ and revelations of the Holy Spirit. Such servanthood holds none of the unhealthy implications of being either slaves or doormats.

It calls us to mirror the self-emptying compassion we have seen mirrored in Jesus. It is the same Jesus, as we clearly know, who dwells in our neighbor. Our neighbors are also temples of God, mirrors of Christ and revelations of the Spirit. Our God dwells in each of us and each of us uniquely manifests our God.

Like Mary, we are called to birth our God for one another, to bring to life the reality of God's presence.

"One needs to be poor to have the space to meet God." I wish I could explain how those words make my heart sing! There is so much to the life of prayer that is hidden, that belongs behind closed doors, or far away from anyone (Matthew 6.6; Matthew 14.23; Luke 6.12, and so on...) and true poverty is like that. Jesus called it a blessed state (Matthew 5.3; Luke 6.20).

Jesus wasn't talking about the poverty of injustice, the grinding famine that so many in the world are facing today, so much as about being "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5.3). Francis and Clare were like that. Their very real physical poverty, being chosen as it was, was an almost sacramental reflection of their spiritual poverty and purity, that known emptiness, emptied-ness, that is the place of God; and that has its holiest parallel in the virgin womb of our Lady, by which "all generations will call [her] blessed" in that she was empty so that she might bear God.

Gardening, and John chapter 4

We've rather neglected our little back garden this year, what with ill-health and heavy rain. In the front it's mostly lawn, and quite dry, so it's easy to keep on top of; whereas the back garden, sloping quite steeply up to the old chalk bank behind, is damp and fertile, and breeds ivy and bindweed and nettles and all manner of rampant things in the most alarming way.

Now we're taking it back.

Jan, as usual, started it, with great plans which, although they can't come to fruition till the autumn, when we can start seriously moving shrubs without too much risk of damage, need at least the resolution of doing something right away. So we've been extending the top patio, and we've moved the water feature off the patio onto its own slab by the drop down to the lower level, beside the steps, where it looks cool and inviting, the water bubbling up over the (imitation) stone sphere and trickling sweetly down into the (imitation) stone basin. It's starting to look nice again, little by little.

Sorry for such an obvious parallel, but that just is how our spiritual lives get sometimes - neglected, and overgrown with rank, nasty things. The way out, though, is not to despair, to call oneself derisive names, to give up on the whole idea of spiritual formation and return to some more nominal kind of Christianity. The only way out is gently, gradually, not trying to clear the whole mess in an afternoon, but being content with one day at a time.

In one of my favourite chapters, John 4, Jesus doesn't try to change the whole of the Samaritan woman's tangled love-life in the course of a single conversation. In fact, he doesn't overtly try and change her life at all: he merely describes it. And, unlike so many of our churches today, Jesus doesn't demand evidence of "fruit in her life" before he'll allow her to preach the Gospel to her own people. That's right: a woman, a foreigner, and a loose-living one at that, preaching the Gospel just as she was, still stained with the life she'd been leading, not even baptised, preaching the Gospel.

We will get things wrong, we will let our lives get overgrown from time to time, but we must just do what we can, what there is right in front of us to do; and not go beating ourselves up over what we have done and what we have failed to do. Surely we at least owe ourselves the grace Jesus showed to this amazing woman, whose faith so far outstripped her righteousness?

A new look

I decided that the poor old Mercy Blog, just two years old now, was looking a bit tired and cluttered. So here's a fresh face, hopefully a bit easier to read, and rather less stuffy-looking.

Hope you like it...

A Dominican Lesson

Sherry W, at Intentional Disciples, has an interesting note on St. Dominic:

When St. Dominic went to Rome, presenting a plan for an Order of Preachers to
the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. At first, this was not possible, as the
council had prohibited the formation of any new religious orders. But Dominic
got around that by choosing the Rule of Augustine for his order, and in 1216 the
official sanction came from Honorius III.

On his trip to seek authorization, he reportedly received a personal tour of
the Vatican's treasures by the pope. "Peter can no longer say, 'Silver and gold
have I none,'" said Innocent III, referring to Acts 3:6.

Dominic, now wholly dedicated to his life of poverty, replied, "No, and
neither can he say, 'Rise and walk.'"

Sherry's note:
But St. Dominic could and did. Among other things, he
raised a boy from the dead in the presence of numerous trustworthy witnesses who
testified to that fact after his death.

I think we need to remember, when sometimes we despair of the church we have been called to live and work in, be it Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran or whatever, that corruption or worldliness is no barrier to individual holiness, nor to what God may do through those individuals he has called aside for his work. Look at what St. Francis accomplished, within what must have seemed a most unpromising and compromised church in his day. A struggling church is no excuse not to work within it, for it, with it... it's no excuse either for not loving it, and all the living stones who form it.

How God sees a drop of water...

Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn or an herb. God knows infinite excellencies in it more than we. He sees how it relates to angels and to men, how it proceeds from the most perfect lover to the most perfectly beloved, how it represents all his attributes. And for this cause it cannot be beloved too much. God the author and God the end is to be beloved in it; angels and men are to be beloved in it; and it is highly to be esteemed for all their sakes. O what a treasure is every sand when truly understood! Who can love anything God made too much? His infinite goodness and wisdom and power and glory are in it. What a world would this be, were every thing beloved as it ought to be!

From Centuries by Thomas Traherne, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

This, quoted by Vicki K Black for the Feast of the Transfiguration, is not only a perfect example of why I have loved Thomas Traherne for so long, but is as Franciscan a view of Creation as you're likely to want!

Praying together...

'Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that.'

St. John Vianney (1786-1859)

This is true, undoubtedly; but the private prayers of someone living an active life within their church - above all, being part of the Eucharistic fellowship - are a different matter... That's more like lots of little packets of explosive connected together with fuses, or 'lead-lines,' like the arrangements demolition contractors use for building implosions. Each one is a separate thing, and by itself its explosion would be insignificant; but link them together, and they can bring down the greatest of strongholds.

Limitations (Barbara Crafton)

The following was lifted whole from a post by Lisa at The Episcopal Majority:

 

The Limitations of Like Minds
by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:22)

Respect for conscience is the great gift of Anglican life together. You are not me, and you never have to become me. You have your own journey, and it is not mine. Together we serve the God who created us both, and we can do so even if we disagree, and even if our disagreement is about very important things. We do not have to be a community of like-minded people. We can just agree to serve.

A community of like-minded people has no internal method of self-correction and self-examination; the most it can do is monitor conformity to unquestioned norms. The friction of argument and the energy it produces is the potent fuel of ideas, in the human community. All our intellectual progress has been accomplished by questioning assumptions.

If an orthodoxy can bear such scrutiny, it remains as it was. If it cannot, it changes. So it has ever been. A questioning mind is not the devil's work. It is one of the fruits of baptism. We pray for it at the font.

That is why we have married priests, why we have women priests. It is why we have restored the ministry of deacons in the Church. It is why the disabled are not barred from serving in ordained ministry. It is why women who have recently given birth are not considered ritually unclean. It is why Christians need not observe the large and complex corpus of Jewish law. It is why the Church is very different in our century from what it was in the 19th. Or in the 16th. Or the 4th.

This is not a betrayal of principle. It is the way human beings live. We live in history as fish swim in water, and history only moves forward. The realm of God to which we look is without time, but the world in which we now live is bound to history. Eyes open, brain in gear and spirit available for instruction, we move with its current.

Don't try to abandon history, for you cannot, not while you are here. Don't try to stop it. Instead, talk to it. Look at it. Listen to it. The human family has many ways of being in the world, and all are instructive in some way. It is the height of hubris to think that we know all there is to know about God's ways because we understand our own. It cuts God out of our story, and makes it a very local story indeed. A story about us alone.

About the Author: Barbara Cawthorne Crafton is an Episcopal priest, spiritual director and author. She was rector of St. Clement's Church in Manhattan's Theatre district. She was also a chaplain on the waterfront of New York, and served both historic Trinity Church, Wall Street and St. John's Church in Greenwich Village. She was a chaplain at Ground Zero during the recovery effort after the WTC bombing. She writes and gardens at The Geranium Farm.

Sacred Meal

(A wonderful extract posted by Vicki K Black at Speaking to the Soul)

From very early times, human beings have shared meals together, and seen in such an act a symbol of fellowship, common life, common love. The sharing of food and fellowship, the drinking of wine in the atmosphere of warmth and joy, such activities are among the most important in life. It is not surprising therefore that at the heart of the worship and experience of God in Christian tradition is the activity of a meal, the Eucharist. Christian spirituality is of a eucharistic type, that is, it comes to see and know and even digest God within the framework of the liturgy of eating and drinking. It has thus the marks of an active and social experience, not those of a passive and private one. And both the involvement in action, and the social character of the experience, are of the essence, and not simply incidental aspects, of the Christian spiritual path. It is an experience of God which takes place within the context of an action involving movement, responses, manual acts, greetings of our fellow participants, the offering of gifts, the receiving of communion; and this action is the action of a community in which individuals are caught up. It is not therefore on the fringes of the common life, but at its centre, that Christian spirituality, even Christian contemplation, happens. ‘Now is the time for God to act’ as the Eastern liturgy says of the eucharistic action. To come to the sacred meal of the community is to expect a divine encounter, it is both to consume and be consumed.

From Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality by Kenneth Leech (Harper and Row, 1985).

Merton on contemplation

As so often, Thomas Merton has the perfect follow-on from my last post... What Merton says about drugs could apply as well to any form of 'contemplative technique' practiced outside the framework of faith.

This is from the Merton Institute Newsletter:

'Contemplation is not a deepening of experience only, but a radical change in one's way of being and living, and the essence of this change is precisely a liberation from dependence on external means to external ends. Of course one may say that an opening of the "doors of perception" is not entirely "external" and yet it is a satisfaction for which one may develop a habitual need and on which one may become dependent. True contemplation delivers one from all such forms of dependence. In that sense it seems to me that a contemplative life that depends on the use of drugs is essentially different from one which implies liberation from all dependence on anything but freedom and divine grace. I realize that these few remarks do not answer the real question [about drugs and contemplation] but they express a doubt in my own mind.'

Thomas Merton. Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968: 217.

Meditation, Contemplation and Prayer

I was having a long conversation with a friend earlier today, about the nature of different sorts of prayer. What, he wanted to know, was the difference between contemplation and meditation, and how could we know whether we are doing anything useful by engaging in these things, or should we be concentrating on more 'useful' kinds of prayer?

I was very taken by his questions, somehow. He seemed to be speaking not only for himself but for so many Christians these days, who are puzzled by the relationship between the more widely known kinds of petition and intercession, and these strange new worlds of prayer.

I don't know if this is the place to go into this whole question in great depth, but the answers I tried to give my friend might be worth outlining here.

The Wikipedia article, Christian Meditation, is introduced with the following words, 'Christian meditation is meditation in a Christian context. The word meditation has come to have two different meanings: (1) continued, intent, focused thought; and (2) a state of quiet, intentionally unfocused, "contentless" awareness. This double meaning has contributed to misunderstanding and disagreement about the nature, role, and even the appropriateness of Christian meditation. Traditionally, the word meditation (meditatio) had the first meaning, and another word, contemplation (contemplatio) was used for the second. (These words, however, have nearly the reverse meanings in Eastern spiritual traditions, contributing to the confusion.)'

Meditation, then, in Christian practice, is concerned generally with discursive thought; contemplation, on the other hand, is concerned with its avoidance! I would personally take issue with the word 'contentless' in referring to Christian contemplation. Michael Ramsey, for instance said this, '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.' (Canterbury Pilgrim) It is, however, in itself wordless, as Paul explains 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.'

The line blurs, of course, with prayers of repetition, whether the very simple, often single word, style taught by John Main, and employed as a fall-back (when pure contemplation falters) by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, or the more complex and definitely not contentless Jesus Prayer, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Here the words are used as a way into contemplation, a springboard as it were. Robert Llewlyn, in A Doorway to Silence (DLT, 1986), has the picture of a large, old pheasant crossing a wide lawn, where it ran along the grass, rising up to fly a few yards, then, tired, returning to earth to run a few more paces, and then repeating the performance. He points out that just as the pheasant had the good, solid earth to return to, we have the good, solid words of our prayer.

Llewlyn is referring in this book to the Rosary, which is another crossroads prayer. As prayed in its traditional form, involves prayers of repetition (the Hail Mary, the Lord's Prayer, the Gloria) underpinning discursive meditation on the 'Mysteries,' key events in the life of Jesus, and of his Mother. Many people who pray the Rosary find that, usually after long use, it can lead directly into contemplation, which process is the whole subject of A Doorway to Silence (DLT, 1986), whose subtitle is 'The Contemplative Use of the Rosary.'

So is contemplation a waste of time, pointless navel-gazing, or worse, opening the back door of our minds to whatever spiritual entity might decide to come strolling in?

Of course if you keep in mind Michael Ramsey's definition above, you will begin to see that contemplation is anything but selfish introspection, and if you consider Paul's account of the role of the Spirit in the passage I quoted from Romans, you will see that the mind is very far from being left undefended.

As I said in an earlier post today, 'Contemplation brings us continually closer to God, and so we get all tangled up in his love and his mercy.' One of the great early teachers of contemplation, St Isaac of Nineveh, the 7th Century anchorite and unwilling Bishop, said:

'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."'

A final word from one of the great contemplatives of the Middle Ages, Catherine of Siena:

'The secret of Christian contemplation is that it faces us with Jesus Christ toward our suffering world in loving service and just action...'

After the retreat...

Following my retreat, I spent quite some time just catching up on things - as if I'd been away for months! - and just trying to let things settle down in my mind to the point where I could express them slightly coherently.

I have always, I guess, known that intercession and contemplative prayer are all tangled up together somehow. I think it's pretty hard to be a contemplative - well, a Christian contemplative anyway - without being an intercessor as well; and, I suppose, hard to be an intercessor at any depth without at least some contemplative dimension to our prayer.

Contemplation brings us continually closer to God, and so we get all tangled up in his love and his mercy. All those things that have touched us, friends' grief, news reports of pain and loss, things we see and hear casually - or so we think - on our way through life, get "treasured up" (just as our Lady treasured the things she heard about her Son) in our hearts without our realising it, and increasingly so as we become increasingly saturated with grace through our contemplation, and we somehow cling crying to God with "sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8.26) not knowing why our contemplation has turned suddenly to tears...

The other aspect of the retreat was very strongly rooted in Mother Julian's teaching itself... she says, (Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text, Ch. 39, tr. Upjohn) "...though the soul is healed [of sin, through contrition, compassion, and longing for God] God still sees the wounds - and sees them not as scars but as honours."

And this, which made sense of many things I'd been feeling but had not understood: "The soul that would remain in peace must, when another's sins come to mind, flee as from the pains of hell, searching into God for remedy and help against it... For looking on another['s]... sin makes, as it were, a thick mist before the eyes of the soul, so that for a time we cannot see the beauty of God..."

Not only was there much healing involved in these passages for me personally, but I began to understand why I find things like reality TV, soaps, "true confessions," and many sorts of drama and fiction pretty well unbearable. I have often wondered why this should be - it's more than an aversion, more like a spiritual allergy, to the extent I can't stay in the same room if someone's watching this stuff on television - and now I realise I'm not the only one to feel like this!

I don't know if anyone else has this reaction, but I find a strange thing about going on retreat is that while I arrive home buzzing with everything that happened, full of a kind of leaping spiritual energy, I quickly become bogged down in the quotidian, and within a week or so I feel miles away from that place of stillness before God... then gradually, from somewhere below the conscious threshold the Spirit brings me back, brings me to where I can understand - or at least, find a few words for - what happened. Then, I find I have changed; not how I'd expected, usually, but changed nonetheless.

I've been thinking...

I've been thinking about what this blog's for, and why I'm keeping it. (Is that what you do with a blog, keep it, like a diary? Or do you blog it? Blogging a blog? H'mm...) I really enjoy reading other people's chatty blogs, with all the details of their holidays, what they're wearing, their neighbours, and their pets - and I'm not saying I'll never write about such things here - but somehow it doesn't feel like the reason I started this.

There are also some very churchy blogs around, full of nothing but learned disquisitions on ecclesiology, past, present and future, and abstruse issues in philosophical theology, and I have to confess I keep most of those in my feed reader for a week or two, and then unsubscribe again once I've built up a couple of dozen unread posts. So, if I'm to do to others what I'd like to be done to me, it's not very fair of me to try and keep one of those going, even supposing I had the academic equipment to manage it...

When I came back from retreat I said, "Maybe later I'll try and say something about the spiritual side of this, but at the moment it still feels very private." But that is why I started this blog, to try and keep track of my own thoughts on prayer, and things related to prayer, and to share them in case there might be resonances for anyone else.

I was writing recently to a friend, trying to tell her a bit about my retreat, and all that had happened in those few short days, when it occurred to me that that was what I should be doing here. That was the reason I had first begun. So...

Wrong kind of silence?

Sorry for the gap in transmission - I had a really busy week last week, which was topped off with a hard disk failure. Just what was needed. Today, after an expensive visit to the computer shop, I now have a brand new hard disk, with some much-needed extra capacity too. Then of course I had to sit down and reinstall everything, including all those dear little drivers, and then copy over all my backed-up data. Thank goodness for Google Browser Sync - I hadn't lost all my bookmarks and passwords either. So no despair, just tedium... well, at least I didn't have to reinstall all those odd little bits of software I now no longer use, but never could bear to uninstall, so things are a bit tidier too.

Fortunately, with Gmail, I was able to keep in touch with people... but blogging had to go on hold for a while. I'll try and post a few thoughts later on this week about living in the country. Not Labradors and blackberries, but what the church is in places like this, and maybe what it could be...

Your Holiness...?

"The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary "unity" against all others. The affirmation of the self as simply "not the other". The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say "yes" to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone.

I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further.

So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. This does not mean syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing. There is much that one cannot "affirm" and "accept," but first one must say "yes" where one really can.

If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it."

Thomas Merton. Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday, 1966: p. 144.

Limitless grace...

Sr Claire Joy, over at Flavor of the Month, has a wonderful quote from Barbara Crafton+, which I just can't resist posting here:

It turns out there's no secret code, no hidden key. There's no need of one: eternal life isn't locked. Anybody can live as a lover of God and neighbor, just by walking out his front door and looking around at what needs to be done. And then doing the first thing that presents itself. And then another. And another. As many as you want — they're all your neighbors. And the Christ who lives in you also lives in each of them.

Beautiful! What are we so afraid of, that we try and set limits to grace, at least for other people?

Mercy & grace...

Jane R at Acts of Hope has a real act of hope to share with us:

From Episcopal Life Online (formerly Episcopal News Service):

Monks of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE) are joining forces with a member of the Massachusetts National Guard to help men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan find a safe place to heal.

Read the full story here.

A Centaur writes...

Just found this on Padre Mickey's - a way of working out what mythological creature you are. So, I seem to be a centaur, which is actually quite appropriate if you remember your Narnia ;-)

(Now, listen up some of you readers! This is only a bit of fun - ain't got nothin to do with demons, nor false gods, neither...)

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person. However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways. You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order. You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Sts. John Jones and John Wall

Sts. John Jones and John Wall c. 1530-1598; 1620-1679
(With thanks to Saint of the Day)

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These two friars were martyred in England in the 16th and 17th centuries for refusing to deny their faith.

John Jones was Welsh. He was ordained a diocesan priest and was twice imprisoned for administering the sacraments before leaving England in 1590. He joined the Franciscans at the age of 60 and returned to England three years later while Queen Elizabeth I was at the height of her power. John ministered to Catholics in the English countryside until his imprisonment in 1596. He was condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. John was executed on July 12, 1598.

John Wall was born in England but was educated at the English College of Douai, Belgium. Ordained in Rome in 1648, he entered the Franciscans in Douai several years later. In 1656 he returned to work secretly in England.

In 1678 Titus Oates worked many English people into a frenzy over an alleged papal plot to murder the king and restore Catholicism in that country. In that year Catholics were legally excluded from Parliament, a law which was not repealed until 1829. John Wall was arrested and imprisoned in 1678 and was executed the following year.

John Jones and John Wall were canonized in 1970.

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We Anglicans should, I think, look unflinchingly at some of these shameful incidents from our past. I don't mean we should continually beat ourselves up over them, nor that we should all immediately go over to Rome as a penance. I just feel we need to own where we are coming from. We need to do this in fairness to our sisters and brothers of the Roman Church; more urgently, we need to look at our current attitudes and behaviour in the light of our past.

There is much loose talk of schism, on both "sides" of however you wish to characterise the present unrest in the Anglican Communion. How then are we going to behave towards those with whom we disagree? Are we going to be like Titus Oates, and ferment distrust and intolerance, and ultimately injustice, against those we fear; or are we going to behave more like the Franciscan Poor Clare St Veronica Giuliani, who though unjustly accused and deprived of office and privilege, remained in obedience and quite free of bitterness till she was finally restored?

St Benedict of Nursia

I was intending to post a quite long and informative note on St Benedict, it being his feast day and all, but as I might have guessed, that Pesky Panamanian Priest has got there first with another of his high-class hagiographical highlights.

Do read this - superb stuff - we owe so much to St Benedict, who must go down as the man whose work laid the foundations for the religious life as we know it. As Padre Mickey says, "Today is the feast of St. Benedict of Nursia. He is important because he really helped establish monasticism in the form which spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and helped civilize much of Europe. The Rule he developed is the Rule of Life used by many monastic orders even to this day..."

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...