Figgy

I did promise to post a picture of Figgy, the contemplative cat. This is she, in typical pose! (I hate to admit it, but that's my desk in typical pose as well...)

A special deformity of conscience?

There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done ‘for the common good.’ As an example, one might point to the way in which racial hatreds and even persecution are admitted by people who consider themselves, and perhaps in some sense are, kind, tolerant, civilized and even humane. But they have acquired a special deformity of conscience as a result of their identification with their group, their immersion in their particular society. This deformation is the price they pay to forget and to exorcise that solitude which seems to them to be a demon.

From Disputed Questions by Thomas Merton
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York, 1960) Page 183.

This quotation from Thomas Merton underlines what I was writing about in my 'E' Word post the other week. We, as Christians, the very people who ought to be immune to this sort of thing, practice it regularly as part of our denomination identity. In point of fact, it's very rare these days that we do it on racial grounds, but when we come to matters of conscience, or worse, matters of sexual identity, then we are right up there with the professionals. Consider the following quote from an Evangelical social concern website:

"Christians would never want to be homophobic or discriminate against homosexuals out of bigotry or prejudice. Christians of course earnestly desire the repentance and salvation of homosexuals. However, the Bible is clear that the only rightful sexual relationship for which we were created, is a relationship between a man and a woman. Consequently there are times when Christians need to be free to discriminate against homosexuals."

Really? Should we be free to discrminate against people? Again, I have to refer us to the popular wristband slogan, "What Would Jesus Do?"

Now remember, the Bible is far clearer about the only rightful sexual relationship between a man and a woman being within marriage than it is about homosexual relations. Yet, do we find Jesus "discriminating against" adulterers? Remember, he let one go off to act as the first recorded evangelist even before she had straightened out her tangled sex life (John 4:28-30) - and he saved another from the punishment decreed by the Law of Moses (John 8:3-11) using the extraordinary words, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again." Forgiveness and counsel, even trust for ministry. I don't see discrimination there.

Remember, I'm writing about adultery, the only cause for which Jesus permitted divorce out of hand. A capital offence, according to the Law. Jesus said plenty against adultery, yet when confronted with actual adulterers, women adulterers at that, against whom his culture discriminated most rigorously, he behaved with the most astonishing love and generosity. About homosexuality he said not a recorded word, for or against; and yet we claim Scriptural warrant (a warrant which on careful analysis raises all manner of exegetical and hermeneutical questions - but that's another issue altogether - read this for one interesting point of view) to behave more harshly to homosexuals than Jesus did to adulterers. If anything qualifies as an example of Merton's "special deformity of conscience," I reckon that does.

Sine proprio...

People usually translate the Latin phrase sine proprio as "without property", or "poverty". But as Francis of Assisi used it, perhaps a better translation would be "without possessing".

Gordon Plumb, in an article in the Third Order Chronicle for Summer 2003, remarks that the words "... refer rather to a way of living without grasping (and are thus far more about attitudes and values than about intrinsic wealth or the lack of it)."

I've been increasing being challenged recently by the thought that God's call on my life is to prayer, and that my own Franciscan vocation is probably to be understood, at least in a great part, as living sine proprio anything else. There has been a process of stripping going on here that dates back at least to that occasion some years ago when I really asked God to let me know his Son, really know him, before anything else. It's since then that this has been going on, that everything I've tried to do that isn't at least in some sense prayer has just come to bits in my hands, to the point that I'm almost scared to touch anything in case I break it.
After all, every "career move", whether in the world or in the church, has fallen to nothing in ways that surely bear the imprint of God's hand, his holy and paradoxical way doing things that is so alien to us: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD" (Isaiah 55:8)

By now, the challenge is acute, almost a daily pain. It wakes me in the night; all my thoughts and desires are confronted by it, measured against it. It will not go away.

What I need to do now, I suppose, is to try, with the help and discernment of my Franciscan brothers and sisters, not to mention (as always!) Jan, to find out how this is to be lived practically. Following Francis following Christ is always an entirely practical exercise, however ridiculous that may seem to the average pair of eyes in the world!

I've been thinking...

I see it's over a week now since I posted here, and I know I've been a bit remiss.

I've been thinking, or at least attempting to think. I know there are connections, and if I could see what they are, I could make sense of something that's itching at the edges of my mind. The trouble is, I don't think I'd like that sense very much.

Anyway, I'd better tell you some of the things that have been flittering about, and just maybe writing them down will help put things into some sort of order at least. OK, let's make a list:

• It won't have escaped your notice that the British Government is going through something of a hard time at the moment, and the chrome on the New Labour wagon is blistering and flaking a little.
• Cruelty to animals is on the up & up in this country.
• The same sort of thing is happening with children, with the elderly, with people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities. The incidence of cases - well, reported cases anyway - of neglect and cruelty seems to be increasing.
• People trafficking is becoming a major industry in some places in the larger British cities, and the Police seem impotent to combat it.
  
• The racist BNP, the British National Party, has been making significant gains in the local elections, especially in some parts of London.
• The Liberal Democrats seem to have woken from their woozy Kennedy daze, and are looking around at the way things are...
• The Conservatives are publicly describing themselves as compassionate.
  
• Animal rescue centres are receiving increased donations, and increased interest from potential adopters. Their online presence is increasing, and this is helping animals to be re-homed who might otherwise remain in their pens.
• The same sort of thing is happening with charities dedicated to helping vulnerable people. Even Lottery funding is finding its way to these organisations.
• The religious right is becoming increasingly hardline in its response to sexual diversity, and even in some places to the (ordained) ministry of women in the church.
• Some churches, or Christian movements, which till very recently have been on the left - or progressive, or emergent (you fill in the rest) - wing of Evangelicalism, have been moving further right.
• The old, British modernist liberalism seems to be losing its grip on the imagination of the CofE.
• There is what I read as the beginnings of a kind of postmodernist Liberal Evangelicalism within said institution, and a little colour is coming back into its cheeks as a result. Even presumed Catholic institutions like the religious communities are catching some of it...
  
• I could go on, but that's quite enough for the moment.

What's going on here? Why are things polarising like this? What is going on in the spiritual realm to give rise to effects like this among us creatures of flesh and blood? Remember, "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12) Paul counsels us to "take up the whole armour of God..." (v. 13) and the very first part of that armour, as Paul describes it, is the belt of truth, and the second is the breastplate of righteousness.

Our prayer needs to be for truth and righteousness - or justice. At the beginning of Prayer Week 2006 let's remember that. Remember "...we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ." (1 Cor 10:3-5)

Let's pray for truth and justice, in the world and in the church - but let's be prepared, like Paul, to stand up for them as well, and, if necessary, to take the consequences as God gives us grace (2 Cor 12:9) to allow his strength to be made perfect in our weakness...

Friday Five: Procrastination

I HAVE to do this one!

1. Guitar forums - endless hours not just exchanging tips & tricks with other guitarists the world over, but playing silly games of album cover consequences, guess the riff, and other enthralling pursuits ;-)
2. Guitar manufacturers' websites, guitar amplifier manufacturers' websites, guitar string manufacturers' websites, guitar accessory manufacturers' websites... you're getting the hang of it now?
3. Reading stuff I keep in the bathroom - computer mags, but mostly (how did you guess) guitar catalogues, guitar amplifier catalogues, guitar... Oh, you fill in the rest...
   
4. Rearranging my (computer) desktop - rearranging the real one? Not a hope...
5. Going up & down stairs several times because each time I 'forget' to bring something either up or down. No, really, this is a form of procrastination...

Things I don't do to procrastinate: cleaning things. Weeding the garden. Calling people I ought to call. Writing overdue letters, even emails...

H'mm. 12 steps, anyone?

The ‘E’ Word

Following a link, ultimately from a post on Good In Parts, I found a fascinating article by John Buckeridge, the editor of Christianity magazine. You can read it in full here.

John’s argument is that the word ‘evangelical’ is no longer useful to describe the current of church life that it once did. He says:

Half a century ago words like ‘gay’, ‘ecstasy’ and ‘wicked’ meant something very different than they do today. In the past ‘evangelical’ stood for four key values:

• a commitment to the authority and centrality of scripture,

• a call to personal faith and repentance,

• the centrality of Christ’s death as our substitute,

• putting faith into action through evangelism and social action.

Now to the unchurched and people of other faiths – evangelical is increasingly shorthand for: right-wing US politics, an arrogant loud mouth who refuses to listen to other people’s opinions, men in grey suits who attempt to crowbar authorised version scripture verses into every situation, or ‘happy-clappy’ simpletons who gullibly swallow whatever their tub thumping minister tells them to believe. Large parts of the British media seem happy to paint evangelicals into that stereotype. Today in the UK ‘evangelical’ is often linked with the ultimate 21st century swearword ‘fundamentalist’. The result is the name ‘evangelical’ which years ago, may have smelt of roses – now has the aroma of the manure that fertilises the bush.

This has connections with my ‘Upside Down’ post, only what I was suggesting was more than a play on words. I fear that our actual thought processes, our ways of relating to God and to our neighbour, our capacity to love, to minister grace, to embody Christ in his mercy and his purity, are being eroded by what is happening as right-wing attitudes and fundamentalist hermeneutics infiltrate the evangelical church. (Think of George Orwell’s definition of doublethink!)

I am deeply disturbed by all this.

I was reading someone’s summary of their own character in a blog profile somewhere the other day, and it set me thinking. Am I a romantic?

Now, if romantic implies expensive boxes of chocolate, small bunches of dewy red roses, tuxedos and patent-leather dancing shoes for men, and floaty dresses and stiletto heels for women, then I’m not, not, not a romantic. No way.

If on the other hand it implies long walks on the beach at sunset, going to sleep in one another’s arms, giving one’s heart and one’s commitment and one’s total intimacy to one other person, then I am definitely a romantic.

Am I an evangelical?

Now, if this implies uncritical acceptance of the industrial west, our foreign policy and our policies on economics, immigration, social welfare, housing; if it implies reading the Bible as one might read a manual for a washing machine, applying literally both Old Testament laws and every paragraph of all Paul’s letters to our own ways of doing church; if it implies a way of life lived according to instructions from church leadership that can’t be questioned in case one is thought disobedient or lacking in accountability; if it means in practice (no matter what may be said in theory) preferring law to grace, rules to love, doctrinal and ethical purity to mercy and acceptance, then I’m so not an evangelical.

If on the other hand it implies treating the Bible as God’s inspired word to his creation; if it implies taking seriously the Good News of Jesus, in all its grace and mercy, all its power and radically demanding purity, then maybe I am.

If I’m not an evangelical, then am I a liberal?

Well if that implies treating the Bible as no more than another set of axiomatically questionable ancient texts to be demythologised; if it implies treating the Good News of Jesus as just another set of ethical ramblings by a long-dead wise man; if it implies treating theology as just another academic discipline properly confined within the corridors of universities, and prayer as one of many techniques of self-hypnosis, then no, no chance.

But if it implies understanding the Bible as God’s word given to imperfect, culturally conditioned human beings, and expressed not only in history, theology and moral instruction, but also in poetry, polemic and narrative; if it implies recognising that while Paul wrote some of the most penetrating and profound theology, and some of the most poignant personal meditations on God and life, some of his letters contain very limited, particular advice to individual local churches that are not only very different from each other but immensely different culturally from anything we might encounter, especially in the west; if it implies “freedom to develop unique ways of approaching God and talking about Christianity”, and freedom from “dogmatic statements and claims of absolute truth on finer doctrinal points” (quotes from Wikipedia), then maybe I am.

Not for the first time, I’m so grateful simply to be able to call myself a Franciscan!

[Sorry about all the 'I's - you can read 'one' if you prefer, but personally one feels uncomfortable writing as though one were a member of the Royal Family...]

A bit more Merton

"It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition."

From No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York, 1955) Page 121.

Merton getting to me again, thanks to The Merton Foundation's weekly email. He is so right here... I'm sorry to complain again about some of the charismatic/evangelical ways of doing things - and I don't mean to tar everyone with the same brush, truly - but there does tend to be an unspoken assumption that all of our lives, and the results and effects thereof, are under our control. The wholly admirable LutheranChik has an extraordinary post here, where among some very salutory remarks for people like me who tend to critcise other (our own old) ways of doing things, she remarks, "The bottom line, in the words of Luther, is that we're all beggars... The good news is that God refuses to let that prevent God from claiming us, from saving us, from seeking to befriend us. If death itself wasn't going to stop Christ, then the cluelessness of his friends certainly wasn't going to either." And that of course includes us.

We don't after all have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps... we don't have to manufacture our own righteousness. Jesus has reached down into the worst pit we can dig for ourselves, and drawn us up into his risen life with his own strong, gentle, nail-pierced hand. All we have to do is to cry, with Bartimaeus and with the tax-collector at the Temple, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!"

Jesus, Saviour, Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, you have done it already...!

Psalm 84 & stuff

LutheranChik left a comment on my last post to the effect that she's always loved the verse (3) from Psalm 84 that reads “Even the sparrow has found a home ... where she may have her young – a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.”

Me too.. I love that whole psalm. There are just irreplaceable lines so full of our Lord's grace and beauty, and the yearning of our response:

"Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

As they go through the valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools."

and

" For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than live in the tents of wickedness."

Oh Amen!

CS Lewis knew this feeling so well - it's at the heart of this wonderful passage from The Last Battle:

They had seen strange enough things at the Doorway. But it was stranger than any of them to look round and find themselves in warm daylight, the blue sky above them, flowers at their feet and laughter in Aslan’s eyes. He turned swiftly round, crouched lower, lashed himself with his tail and shot away like a golden arrow.

“Come further in! Come further up!” he shouted over his shoulder. But who could keep up with him at that pace?

If that's what awaits us on the other side, then that's, as I think it was Gandalf and Pippin who agreed, "not so bad..."

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)

Thinking a lot about death, and about God's love for all his creatures, just at the moment (Matthew 10:29 and so on). We had to have our beloved dog Mable (yes, spelled like that) put to sleep on Tuesday, at the age of 16. She had finally become so old she could hardly walk up the steps to the back lawn, and could only eat chicken, hand-fed. She had her last Easter with us, and died licking Jan's hand. She'd been our constant companion, friend and comforter since the age of 6 weeks... she was an indefatigable ally of the cats, and the hens, and the calves and the lambs, and the best farm ratter ever! A true lurcher (whippet/collie mix) and one of the gentlest dogs I've known. We'll miss her.

St Clare & her Cats - one of my favourite icons

St Clare apparently loved cats, and had one special one who would sit on her bed as she knitted. Clare had trained her so that if the ball of yarn fell away, the cat would jump down and bring it back to her.

I don't know how many cats there were at San Damiano, but I love the way this icon shows a couple rubbing round her ankles.

The icon is by Terence Nelson - his note on it reads, in part:

As in her life, St. Clare devoutly holds the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in protection of the monastery. At her feet are cats, symbolizing the contemplative life. Consistent with Franciscan love of nature, a sparrow nests in the colonnade, “Even the sparrow has found a home ... where she may have her young – a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.” (Psalm 84:3)

Cats symbolising the contemplative life? Yes, I could go along with that!

Figgy, our little round black rescue cat, loves to pray with me in the early mornings, either sitting on my lap or on the desk in front of me. If I have my Bible or Office folder open, she'll often put a paw on the open page to hold it for me. If I ever forget to let leave my study door ajar for her, she makes a terrible fuss till I do!

Upside down...

I wonder if I’ll get used to God turning my mental and spiritual world upside down on a regular basis? So many unspoken – not to mention spoken – evangelical assumptions are getting exposed by the light of grace that I’m getting slightly vertiginous.

I was mildly offended the other day when I tried one of Beliefnet’s little “What kind of Christian are you?” quizzes and discovered I was supposed to be a “Jerry Falwell Christian”. Now given that the alternatives included Hilary Clinton and Bishop Spong I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was a nasty shock all the same. It did however have the side-effect of spurring me to write this post.

For so many years I’d been sinking into a kind of grace vacuum. One of the comforting things about all but the finest and most self-aware evangelicalism is that there’s a set of rules and regulations to steer by... that the risks inherent in faith (John Wimber: “faith is spelled R-I-S-K”) are replaced by codes of practice. There are so many of them, going by names like “accountability”, “purity”, “Bible-believing”...

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not knocking the actual things themselves. We all need to be accountable, we all need moral clarity, we all most certainly need the Bible at the very centre of our faith and praxis. What worries me are the packages that come with these words.

We affirm our faith in the Bible as the core of our understanding of God, as his word, as inspired by his Holy Spirit and “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” and we find we’ve bought into a hermeneutic that applies Old Testament strictures, and very specific, localised New Testament advice, uncritically to life 2,000+ years later and in a very different cultural setting.

We affirm our understanding of morality as having to do with the outworkings of Jesus’ “two greatest commandments” (Matthew 22:37-39) and we suddenly discover we’ve bought into a set of largely unwritten rules that excludes minorities and the marginalised from fulfilling God’s call on their lives in ministry, and that applies a “give 10% of gross income or else” rule to people living on means-tested benefits.

We affirm our need of accountability, and we discover we really shouldn’t accept a lift from someone of the opposite sex (or maybe it’s the same sex if someone suspects we may swing that way) unless there’s at least one other person of their sex (or maybe it’s our own sex?) (scratches head a while) in the car.

My point, if I haven’t laboured it too far already, is that we have to be so careful that our strongly-held convictions don’t lead us to buy into value systems that we don’t belong in, and that can lead us to unthinkingly reinforcing those sets of assumptions, promulgating them, judging others by them, seeking to re-arrange their lives in accordance with them...

You remember those wristbands that were so popular a few years ago, with the letters WWJD stamped on them? Perhaps we should revive the fashion. Would Jesus refuse to speak to a woman alone in case some busybody or easily led and morally challenged person got the wrong idea? Well did he? (John 4) Would Jesus refuse to accept God’s call in someone’s life because she didn’t measure up to the lifestyle yardsticks of the religious establishment? Did he? (Luke 10:42)

Andy Hickford has an interesting observation in an article in the April issue of Christianity magazine: “Then of course there’s Jesus! When it comes to Jesus and the law, it can be a bit confusing. Matthew 5:17 says that Jesus came to fulfil the law. Romans 3:31 says that he upholds the law. In Romans 7:6 it says that Jesus released us from the law and in Ephesians 2 Paul writes that Jesus abolished the law! So, just what is the relationship between Jesus and the Old Testament’s laws?! Basically, Jesus replaces the Old Testament law. In him it is all fulfilled and upheld, because he completes it. We are released from its regulation and condemnation- that’s what meant by ‘He abolished the law.’ However, its wisdom and history is fulfilled in Christ.”

It’s odd, but I’ve discovered more honesty and grace, more love and clear, courageous thinking on things like this within the “established churches” than anywhere else recently. I don’t know just what God’s up to with the Anglican Communion at the moment, but within these ivy-clad ancient walls there’s a positive explosion of Christlikeness going on. You've only to look in a few of the blogs in the Blogging Episcopalians webring (link in the sidebar) to see what I mean.

Grace, grace, grace... “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:16-17)

Easter Vigil

Sunlight early on cold stone
dry and rough
against our fingers;
the new fire flutters,
clinging to its twigs
in the wall angle,
against a chill breeze.

He is risen, and his light
finds our hearts in the still of dawn,
our bodies only half awake,
our white breath following us
to the porch and the great candle:
his light given,
that we must give and give.

He Is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

Easter Saturday...

the day taken out, like an empty hole in time, anechoic, no-thing.

Prayer is like this very often, a place without a place, “waterless over the harsh rocks, down the dry valley of heedless stones...”

What could have happened in the tomb, between Joseph and Nicodemus leaving, and that dawn of glory? There will never be a way to know: those hours were outside time, and what we are, creatures of days and years, cannot comprehend it.

Again prayer: the truer our prayer, the more we come to him who will forever be beyond our comprehension. We meet him as nearly face to face as we could ever bear, and yet we don’t recognise him. We don’t have the equipment to take him in – we are as uncomprehending as a profoundly deaf man at a symphony concert, or a blind cave salamander in a measureless cavern of crystal.

Tomorrow morning, Mary had this problem. She met her Lord and her Saviour face to face, and thought he was the gardener. Maria Boulding, from Marked for Life - Prayer in the Easter Christ:

Prayer is listening, listening to the word. Like Mary Magdalene we hear many words, but at rare intervals we hear the really piercing word, the word that affirms us in our beings, the fiat that creates and re-creates us. This word is our own name. It is the secret name written on the white stone that no one knows except him who receives it, the secret truth of our own person that we do not yet fully know ourselves but only glimpse, because it is only potentially true as yet, true to God but not yet fully brought to birth.

Tomorrow morning Jesus speaks our name, piercing our incomprehension with his recognition, his knowing, his comprehending us. Our part is to listen – listen into the anechoic disorienting silence, the dead room, the empty garden, long before dawn, “while it was still dark.” This is the time Mary set off, thinking she knew but not even knowing why she went, like we must go, not being able to know why till our Lord calls us by name, but going anyway, into the dark, into the place of tombs, the hortus conclusus, the garden closed to our senses but open to our going in. Listen... listen!

Darkness and Sun Shadows

Darkness
and sun-shadows - the I AM
broken, thirsting forsaken.

The sun’s light failed
and the curtain tore
forever.

You, Jesus, agnus Dei,
qui tollis peccata mundi
accomplished this;

and wrecked despair
against the constant keep
of hope.

Back Home!

Holy Week seems like a good place to turn over a new blogging leaf, and Maundy Thursday particularly appropriate. Though we are many...

I’ve been well and truly convicted by reading Kathryn’s astonishing Good in Parts, as well as my long-time favourite Roman Catholic blogger and solitary Karen Marie Knapp. The Mercy Blog has been so impersonal, especially recently – and yet my life has been in such passionate turmoil over the period I’ve been posting here. I’ve been less than honest I guess, not speaking of the extraordinary journey God’s been taking me on over the last few months, and how he’s brought me back to the Anglican church after 7 years in the Baptist church, and the next 11 in the Vineyard. I’ll have to omit some of the finer details, as they involve other people, but suffice it to say it’s been quite a ride!

It’s crucially important too that for the last 3 years or so I’ve been involved in a conversation with various Franciscans, culminating in my being noviced as a Tertiary on March 4 this year. It just feels so right – Helen Julian CSF, in an essay published in New Daylight, calls it “finding a home.” And so it is. I’ve never been more sure of anything since marrying Jan!

As Mercy Site readers will know, the contemplative life has been drawing me in more and more deeply since, oh, 1978 at least, when I was introduced to the Jesus Prayer by Fr Francis Horner SSM, on an extended visit to Willen Priory. (He gave me Per Olof Sjögren’s wonderful book to read!) About that time, too, I began to read Thomas Merton, and he opened my eyes to the wonderful riches of the church’s experience in prayer. So wherever I’ve been, that’s been the centre of it all – the longing of God in my heart for closeness, intimacy; and the pain he’s let me feel for creation, for all my sister and brother creatures, human and otherwise – an ache that just doesn’t go away but gets stronger over the years and months, like St Paul says in Romans 8:19-23: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

But the amazing thing that’s happened since I began to explore this possibility of returning to the Anglican church, is the joy of coming back to liturgical prayer. I’d been noticing for a few years that my own private “quiet times” had been taking on a more and more liturgical shape, all by themselves somehow, with psalms and readings and regular bits of Scripture that kept coming back, and which I guess I’d have to call canticles. Coming back to this kind of prayer among my sisters and brothers, especially in the context of the Eucharist, has been mind-blowing. I can only describe it as being like being carried along by a deep and powerful river, rather than splashing about trying to swim in the pools.

Some of my past colleagues might be saying to themselves here, “OK as far as it goes, maybe, but what about the Spirit? What about freedom in worship?” All I can say is that I’ve found the Holy Spirit to be alive and well and living in the Church, in every bit of it, in every denomination and movement and flavour. (Unless people really make a determined effort to shut him out, I suppose, but I have to admit I’ve yet to see this theoretical possibility in practice!) And he’s the same Spirit, yesterday and today and forever. I have found so much of grace, of love, of mercy – of Jesus – over recent months. No, I’m not missing out – I feel more like the woman in Luke 15, who lost her coin and found it again, “Rejoice with me!”

A New Language of Prayer

I came across this wonderful article by Ann Kline on the Shalem Institute website ( http://www.shalem.org/) - do read it prayerfully - I think Ann is saying some vitally important things...

A New Language of Prayer

"We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love."
Thomas Merton

I love the word "radical." It speaks to me of a kind of dramatic force that overcomes resistance with its sheer audacity and undeniable truth. Not surprisingly, I am attracted to the idea of radical prayer, prayer so powerful that I am fundamentally changed by it. Heaven knows that kind of radical grace is the only way real change in me is going to happen. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that true prayer is subversive, overturning our limited sense of ourselves and transforming us into partners with God's vision for the world. That kind of prayer speaks deeply to me.

What is the language of radical prayer? When Thomas Merton wrote about a new language of prayer, I do not think he meant something the world had never heard before. In fact, I think the language of prayer he points to is quite old. A clue to what Merton may have meant can be found in the words he wrote in a letter to Heschel, where he spoke about his "latent ambition to be a true Jew underneath his Catholic skin." The kind of conversion that Merton suggests was not one of religion; Merton's Catholicism was not in jeopardy. What I hear in those words is a desire for a conversion of heart such that each tradition could hear the deeper language of prayer they already share.

Our shared prayer language is the language of compassion. It is, to me, the true language of God. As Heschel wrote: "Who is God to you? There is only one answer that survives all the theories which we carry to the grave. He is full of compassion." Compassion is a dialogue of trust in our shared humanity, and in God's unifying presence.

The language of compassion is quite radical. It asks nothing less of us than a total conversion to God, to a unified vision of life. This is what I hear in Merton's words: "Love is my true identify, Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my true name." It is echoed in the words of Heschel, who called prayer "an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs; it is the opening of a window to Him in our will, an effort to make him the Lord of our soul."

We can see in the lives of Heschel and Merton how radical prayer was for them. It made them, as scholar Shaul Maggid put it, "heretics of modernity." Deeply committed to their religions, they challenged those traditions to address where adherence to tradition without heart had led to callousness, shallowness or hypocrisy. Critical of modern life and its temptations, they were also appreciative of all its potential.

The language of radical prayer moved Heschel out of his study and into the march for civil rights with Martin Luther King, Jr. It moved Merton to speak out against war and intolerance and, as a consequence, experience the censorship of his community. Radical prayer puts us at odds with whatever is complacent in us or society. Radical prayer is radical trust in a vision of a world overturned by reverence.

Heschel and Merton taught that there is only one way to develop this radical language of prayer: in silence. As Heschel wrote: "Our awareness of God is a syntax of silence, in which our souls mingle with the divine, in which the ineffable in us communes with the ineffable beyond us." In silence we find a way to touch the wellspring of compassion, the words that God speaks in us. In silence, we find the courage to speak these words in the ways we act in the world. Silence teaches us how to speak (H Nouwen).

Today we are struggling with the challenges of pluralism. We do not all believe the same way, look the same way, live the same way. As I watch and listen to events that increasingly polarize and divide us, I hear echoes of the past. As a Jew I am well aware of the ways fear can turn the heart of a whole nation to stone so that it can no longer feel a shared humanity. More and more I am convinced that the only thing that speaks to these times is radical prayer, radical compassion.

Radical prayer, as Merton tells us, "requires not talent, not mere insight, but sorrow pouring itself out in love and trust." The challenge and possibilities of this prayer fills me with "the fear of God." It is at once too big for me to imagine and something I can not turn away from. But slowly, breath by breath in the silence, I can feel my heart softening, strengthening, learning this new language of prayer. May we all take a deep breath, quiet our fears and begin to teach our hearts to speak.

© Copyright 2005 Shalem Institute. All rights reserved.

Salutary remarks...

In technological society, in which the means of communication and signification have become fabulously versatile, and are at the point of an even more prolific development, thanks to the computer with its inexhaustible memory and its capacity for immediate absorption and organization of facts, the very nature and use of communication itself becomes unconsciously symbolic. Though he now has the capacity to communicate anything, anywhere, instantly, man finds himself with nothing to say. Not that there are not many things he could communicate, or should attempt to communicate. He should, for instance, be able to meet with his fellow man and discuss ways of building a peaceful world. He is incapable of this kind of confrontation. Instead of this, he has intercontinental ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear death to tens of millions of people in a few moments. This is the most sophisticated message modern man has, apparently, to convey to his fellow man. It is, of course, a message about himself, his alienation from himself, and his inability to come to terms with life.

From Love and Living by Thomas Merton, edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Hart (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) Page 64-65.

This seems to be entirely true...

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." - St. Francis of Assisi

Why the Jesus Prayer (and all contemplative prayer) matters...

"We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us… The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world."

From Love and Living by Thomas Merton, edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Hart (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) Page 120.

[Courtesy of the Thomas Merton Foundation]

"We have seen that the Jesus Prayer involves body, mind and spirit... 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 cosmos). All this is drawn into and affected by the Prayer. One person's prayers send out vibrations and reverberations that increase the power of the divine Love in the cosmos.

The Christian is well aware of the fact that the world is also 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... The power of the Jesus Prayer is the armour against the wiles of the devil, taking heed of the apostle's word, 'Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayers and supplications...' [Ephesians 6:18]"

From Praying the Jesus Prayer by Br Ramon SSF (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1988) Page 26.

A Key Quote, I think ...

This from Thomas Merton just about sums it up for me at this precise moment!

“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial ‘doubt.’ This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious ‘faith’ of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.“

From New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

(New York: New Directions Publishing Company, 1961) Page 12.