On not becoming evil...

So we will pose the great spiritual problem in this way, "How do I stand against hate without becoming hate myself?"

We would all agree that evil is to be rejected and overcome; the only question is, how? How can we stand against evil without becoming a mirror - but denied - image of the same? That is often the heart of the matter, and in my experience is resolved successfully by a very small portion of people, even though it is quite clearly resolved in the life, death and teaching of Jesus.

Jesus gives us a totally different way of dealing with evil - absorbing it in God (which is the real meaning of the suffering body of Jesus) instead of attacking it outside and in others. It is undoubtedly the most counter-intuitive theme of the entire Bible.  It demands real enlightenment and conversion for almost all of us.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, pp. 143, 145

Our default understanding seems to be more like that of the Star Wars universe than Christ's. I can only assume that this has to do with the Fall, described in Genesis 3 as Eve's and Adam's eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We can see this in operation in every war fought across the earth at any point in history, especially in the so-called "just wars". I am not meaning necessarily to criticise here the theory of jus ad bellum: I am merely pointing out that however good the reasons for going to war, however noble and necessary the aims, jus in bello never works. As we saw tragically in the second Gulf War, those on the side of good become evil in order to combat evil, just as Rohr describes.

The Cross is both the symbol and the means of the final defeat of evil. Only on the Cross can we see evil for what it truly is, on the Cross of Christ and on the countless crosses carried, knowingly or unknowingly, by all mortal life. It is only through the Cross that all suffering finally is redeemed (Romans 5 passim; 8.18ff) and it is only in Christ that the dark side is finally overcome (John 1.1-5) Easter is not a festival with bunnies; it is not even just a Christian festival. It is a cosmic event on a par with creation itself - the healing of all that is broken (Revelation 21.1-5) and wrong, the making of all things new again, the Kingdom come, shalom at last...  

Only in silence…

Only in silence and solitude, in the quiet of worship, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and abases itself in the presence of the Invisible God to receive His one Word of Love; only in these “activities” which are “non-actions” does the spirit truly wake from the dream of multifarious, confused, and agitated existence.

Merton, Thomas. Love & Living. Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Heart, Editors. Harcourt, 1979. p. 20-21

I wish I could express somehow how these words awaken my heart’s longing. They come like some rumour from a distant shore, like the scent of green places across a salt and barren sea at the end of a long voyage.

These are not words of escape, though. Peace yes, but no escape, no final rest until “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8.21) Until then, our silence and our solitude are the risk of radical openness, the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13.7)

Prayer cannot finally rest in itself as long as there are tears shed, blood spilt, among even the least in God’s creation—for “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.” (Romans 8.22-23)

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

A Lenten Prayer

The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death.

I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life.  I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are not times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.

Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me.

Amen.

(from The Road to Daybreak, Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Treasures of darkness...

[W]e have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4.7-12 NRSV)

I've not been able to get this passage out of my head since our Assistant Priest Judy mentioned it in her powerful sermon yesterday morning. Later in the same letter Paul says (12.7b-10) that he will gladly boast of his weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in him.

I feel somewhat the same as Paul. Although I have never been one to make my private life public, and this blog was never intended as any sort of reality show, I cannot escape the feeling that I am supposed somehow to share what God is doing in all of this. Like my illustrious predecessor, I am daily finding treasures of darkness, and riches hidden in secret places, and I can't quite keep quiet about it, and it's necessary to include just a little personal detail so as to make what I say comprehensible. My present situation, still unresolved, still neither married not single, is one that is a daily hurt. Jan had to return from the USA earlier this year, and circumstances beyond the control of either of us keep us living here in the same house. It's a situation that, although I did nothing to bring it about, I cannot help but be ashamed of. It stands in the way of all I try to do.

And yet... As a Franciscan, I am predisposed in some deep way to a longing for poverty. (Francis himself, after all, fell in love with "Lady Poverty", a bride he once described as "a wife of surpassing fairness.") There is economic poverty, of course, but for me the crucial thing is the poverty of action, the poverty of self-determination. In this, which really is for me a most painful thing, I am discovering not only a capacity in myself for surrender to God that I never knew I had, but God's goodness, his mercy and his grace. I am getting to know Christ in ways that I never could have done left to myself, that I never could have dreamed of discovering however closely I had attempted, of my own strength, to follow him.

And that's the point. We are called to take up our own crosses and follow Jesus, but we don't usually - well, I didn't - realise just what this means. Jesus' way of the Cross was a way of surrender. From the garden in Gethsemane to the tomb where he was laid, Jesus surrendered himself first of all to his Father, then to his enemies, and finally to his friends. We can only follow him by our own act of surrender - more properly, like Jesus himself, by successive acts of surrender.

For me, it has turned out as Leonard Cohen described, "Love is not a victory march / It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." Yet God is good. Only through the most radical surrender can we find out how good. Only by letting go of all we possess can we really follow our Saviour who gave up everything for us. Only in being emptied can we be filled. Only in loss can we finally be found.

There is such hope in this, such utter and unquenchable hope. On the far side of the worst than can happen, Christ waits for us, his pierced hand stretched out to draw us into perfect joy.

I assume death will be like this. Certainly it seems to have been so for those who have been able to tell us something of the way of their own passing. As Paul said in his letter to the Romans, "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." (8.38-39)

The odd thing is that it is only in these strange conditions of radical poverty that we can actually know these things as true. These are the "treasures of darkness" themselves. We seem to find, like the man who sold everything to buy the pearl of great price, that it is more than worth it. The love of Christ is greater, and stranger, and he himself is closer, than we had ever suspected. All we need is the faith of the Psalmist who wrote, in Psalm 119, "It is good for me that I was humbled, so that I might learn your statutes... Let your steadfast love become my comfort according to your promise to your servant. Let your mercy come to me, that I may live; for your law is my delight."

Nothing we could ever hope to own...

In the Franciscan Third Order we are called to a life of simplicity (see The Principles, Days 10-12), even poverty. In our Western, 21st century life this is an odd thing to understand. I am only just beginning to get a handle on what it might mean, and this only by means of God's showing me its implications in ways that don't allow me to take credit for anything, still less act the hero as I might otherwise be inclined to do.

I am coming to believe that my 20-odd year obsession with Romans 8:28 is actually central to our understanding of the Franciscan way in these odd and troubled times. God does truly work in all things for the good of those who love him, and who are called according to his purpose. In many ways our poverty lies in this, our giving up of our own ambitions to self-determination, self-actualisation, and our abandoning of ourselves to God's grace, his sheer unconditioned gift. Our hopes and dreams are not ours really, not our own to bargain with, to lay plans for, as though we had our future at our own disposal.

I watched an extraordinarily moving film clip today (thanks Dria) of Market Street in San Francisco just days before the earthquake of 1906. The street was full of people, horses, traffic going about their own lives, following their own plans - so full of life and hope. I dare say Port-au-Prince looked much that way on the morning of January 12th.

We cannot know our lifetime. Our next breath is a gift we cannot deserve, and the one after that. We have this moment in which to love God, to love our sister, our brother, the cat who lies against the keyboard, the birds we feed in the garden. In all these things God works for good beyond our imagining, even when they seem so frail, so tragically able to be hurt. Like Jesus in the garden, we are called to an unthinkable trust. That is our poverty, all our riches, nothing we could ever hope to own.

Well...?

Hat-tip to Christine Sine.

Visit The Robin Hood Tax website.

Consolation...

Consolation is a beautiful word. It means "to be" (con-) "with the lonely one" (solus). To offer consolation is one of the most important ways to care. Life is so full of pain, sadness, and loneliness that we often wonder what we can do to alleviate the immense suffering we see. We can and must offer consolation. We can and must console the mother who lost her child, the young person with AIDS, the family whose house burned down, the soldier who was wounded, the teenager who contemplates suicide, the old man who wonders why he should stay alive.

To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, "You are not alone, I am with you. Together we can carry the burden. Don't be afraid. I am here." That is consolation. We all need to give it as well as to receive it.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

The consolation of friends is a precious and irreplaceable thing. You know who you are - thank you! 

The plague that destroys at midday...

One of the perils of the contemplative life that our age seems to have forgotten to watch out for is a condition called accidie, or acedia. The excellent if brief Wikipedia article describes it as follows:

Acedia (also accidie or accedie, from Latin acidĭa, and this from Greek ἀκηδία, negligence) describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression. Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life...

The demon of acedia holds an important place in early monastic demonology and psychology. Evagrius of Pontus, for example, characterizes it as "the most troublesome of all" of the eight genera of evil thoughts. As with those who followed him, Evagrius sees acedia as a temptation, and the great danger lies in giving in to it.

In her remarkable A Book of Silence, Sara Maitland remarks,"It is very difficult to describe the effects of accidie, because its predominant feature is a lack of affect, an overwhelming sense of blankness and an odd restless and dissatisfied boredom." (p. 108) It is pre-eminently the sin of social networking, and of the online life generally.

I often used to wonder what this was that came over me, so that I could spend hours  messing around at the keyboard, and have nothing to show for it at the end. Now I think I begin to understand. Just as the enemy of our souls uses other good and wholesome things about being human, like sex, and food, and companionship, so these new means of communication and learning become means of our being pulled off course, diverted from the ways God has prepared for us to walk in.

John Cassian compared acedia to "the plague that destroys at midday" of Psalm 91 (90 in the Greek numbering). This affliction is not depression properly speaking, though I think some contemporary psychiatrists would so diagnose it, but a spiritual issue, sin if you will. Certainly the old eremitical writers like Cassian recognised it as such. It is prayer, and simplicity, and plain obedience to the order of one's own rule, as well as simple physical work, that will set us free. But perhaps above all prayer. We could do worse than start with Psalm 91...

Trust...

My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is in what the heart of man cannot feel. Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart. My hope is in what the hand of man has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers.

Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1999, pp. 29-30

This is so close to what God has been showing me over the last year... We know so very little of his purposes for us, let alone for those we meet and serve and love. Our trust is all we can bring, a gift that can only be held  in open hands.

That Glorious God...

I just stumbled across the most remarkable article by Dr Rowan Williams on the Lord's Prayer. Do go and read it for yourself - from someone in whose conversion many years ago the Lord's Prayer was central, and who has struggled with its purity and its holiness ever since, this is the real thing. Read it, please.

Dr Williams begins:

The prayer as a whole tells us we stand in a very vulnerable place. We stand in the middle of a human world where God's will is not the most automatic thing that people do. Where crisis faces us, where uncertainty is all around about tomorrow and where evil is powerfully at work.

To stand with dignity and freedom in a world like that, we need to know that God is Our Father. We need to know that whatever happens to us God is God, God's name and presence and power and word are holy and wonderful and that that glorious God has made us members of his family in a very intimate and direct way.

With that confidence, that kind of unchildish dependence, we're actually free. We know that there is a relationship that nothing can break.

And again, you could turn to Saint Paul on that to the end of chapter eight of his Letter to the Romans: "I know that nothing, nothing can separate me from the love of God and Jesus Christ". And to begin that prayer "Our Father" is really to say what Saint Paul is saying. Just as in the old hymn, here is an anchor that keeps the soul. Here is the anchorage that keeps us steady in this turbulent, difficult, nightmare world.

So the Lord's Prayer is a prayer that is utterly serious about the danger, the tragedy of the world.

Absolutely thrilling words from a theologian and pastor for whom I have, and have had since I read his The Wound of Knowledge and Resurrection back in the early 80s, the deepest love and respect.

Falling through...

Brothers and sisters, remember that your life situation will not last. It is only that which you fall through so that you can fall into your actual Life, and that Big Life ironically includes death (which is the falling). For Paul the word for that Life Force field is "Christ." Yes it is personified and summed up in Jesus, but he also says it is everywhere and always available to all who "fall through" (read "are transformed").

Everybody takes their present life's situation as if it is their one and only life. It is not! So wait for those moments when you fall through your life's situations into your real life, which is Christ, or Christ Consciousness (1 Corinthians 2:16), if you prefer. What you are doing in prayer is consciously choosing to let go of your grasping mind and its identification with passing life situations so that you can fall into your Real Life which is always much bigger and better than you, and shared by all. It is the Eternal Life of Christ.

Richard Rohr, from The Great Themes of Paul

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience... For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:12,3

How I need to keep these words before me in these days!  The weaker I am myself, in this strange anchorless between time, the more clearly I hear, like Paul, God saying "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (1 Corinthians 12:9)

I should apologise for the infrequency of my posts here, and my still greater infrequency in commenting on others' blogs. I am still here, still alive and online, and I do read something of what the rest of the blogosphere has to say. But it's not always so easy at the moment to avoid being a little taciturn, or, as Ronnie Barker would have said in Porridge, being a charmless nerk...

Home again, home again...

Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our centre and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.

(from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey )

Back from Hilfield, things are becoming clearer. It's in many ways wonderful to be back in my own church community, from the very different community that is the Friary. It's strange, but loner that in so many ways I am, I just love living in community. I was thinking this morning about how to express this seeming paradox, when I found this quote from Henri Nouwen that summed it up perfectly.

It's obvious that I need both discipline and simplicity to follow the deepening call to prayer and service that seems to have overtaken me. Discipline in the sense of living according to a framework of time, just as a religious community does, with its hours, its times of work and meals and recreation. Simplicity in the sense of trimming away what I am not called to do, and giving myself wholeheartedly that those things that I am. It sounds obvious, but I find that when I examine, mindfully, the patterns of my own life, there are far too many things that just get in the way, and I shall have to see what I would be better off without!

Over the next few weeks, I shall be making a few changes to my online life, too. I think I shall have to abandon Facebook and Twitter. They are good things in themselves, but they are a fierce waste of time unless you actually need them for the way you work. I shall also have to go on a geek diet, probably. I waste loads of time mucking around researching things I don't need to research, playing with software I've no practical need for, and many more things like that. It's got to stop. God has more use for me than that, strange as it may seem - especially to me!

This blog is good and important, though, and I shall continue to write here, perhaps in rather more depth than I often have. The old place is looking a bit tired and scruffy, too, so I'll try and smarten things up a bit...

Huge thanks, by the way, to all who prayed for me on this trip. Your prayers were answered, and then some, as I'll hope to explain here over the next few posts...

Seeing…

Spirituality is about seeing. It’s not about earning or achieving. It’s about relationship rather than results or requirements.

Once you see correctly, the rest follows.  Mary Oliver, the poet, puts it so well. It is like “seeing through a veil, secretly, joyfully clearly!”

You don’t need to push the river, because you are in it. The life is lived within us, and we learn how to say yes to that life.

If we exist on a level where we can see how “everything belongs,” we can trust the flow and trust the life, The Life so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its opposite, death.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Everything Belongs, pp. 33-34

Our minds are always active. We analyze, reflect, daydream, or dream. There is not a moment during the day or night when we are not thinking. You might say our thinking is “unceasing.” Sometimes we wish that we could stop thinking for a while; that would save us from many worries, guilt feelings, and fears. Our ability to think is our greatest gift, but it is also the source of our greatest pain. Do we have to become victims of our unceasing thoughts? No, we can convert our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer by making our inner monologue into a continuing dialogue with our God, who is the source of all love.

Let’s break out of our isolation and realize that Someone who dwells in the centre of our beings wants to listen with love to all that occupies and preoccupies our minds.

from Henri J.M. Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey.

Being at various kinds of crossroads at the moment, I’m going off to Hilfield for a few days—back next week. If you’ve a moment spare, please do pray that my eyes will be opened to the depth of the grace and mercy of Christ, and that God’s will for the next stage of my life will become clear, and strong in my heart: that I will have the courage to step in faith into all that he has prepared for me. (Ephesians 2:21)

Epiphany

You who walk [the way of the wise men] toward Christ—long and fearsome as it may be—who persevere in this difficult inner journey of prayer will come face to face with what you’re looking for. Take care though, the life of prayer is not magic—speak the right words, do the right things, and presto, enlightenment. No, you’ll never conjure up a mystical experience; the mystical is not magical.

Instead, you’ll be lead into the fullness of God (Ephesians 3.19). This fullness is the end of the journey, the goal of all life, the fruit of your spiritual practice. But the moment we say “goal,” we’re tiptoeing close to danger. The ego loves goals, and talking about the goal of prayer arouses your ego and launches you into the kind of grasping, reaching, and achieving that’s the antithesis of true prayer.

So here’s what you’re to do:

The eleventh way is the way of utter relinquishment. There is no further you can travel. You’ve come as near to the Light as you can get on your own.  You must now stop and sit still before Christ.  Ask nothing.  Demand nothing.  Accept whatever comes. Open the treasure chest of your heart and keep it open by breathing gently, letting your breath fall into a natural, uncontrolled rhythm.  Offer the three gifts that have carried you here: gold of faith, frankincense of hope, myrrh of love. They’re all you have now. And these too you must surrender to Christ. Empty and naked you wait, ready to receive what nothing can buy, earn, or comprehend.

The divine Fire, the Light you’ve sought from the beginning, will come suddenly and unexpectedly—an exquisite, unexplainable joy. When you no longer care when and how the Fire comes, or what it’s like when it does, you’re less apt to miss its warmth.

Chris Erdman

Fruitfulness…

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another's wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.

From Henri J.M. Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey.

Help in helplessness…

Non-dual thinking is not the avoiding of dualistic thinking.  It’s using it as far as it can get you, but also recognizing its limits. You need dualistic thinking for clarification, for making important and necessary distinctions; because we’re not saying that everything is perfect, or everything is beautiful. In fact, non-dual thinking gives you a greater subtlety and sharper discernment to see how common evil is and how goodness is sometimes hidden, and how common goodness is and how evil is sometimes hidden.

Once I get my own agenda out of the way (through practice of silence, solitude, self-observation, and letting go), I don’t just see blatant evil or perfect good, I actually see things with greater clarity, with their own complexity, and often with my own complicity.

If we can get our narrow politics and our self-serving anger out of the way, in fact we’ll see like never before the depth of the problem, the depth of the need, and the depth of the suffering on this earth.

Richard Rohr, adapted from the webcast Exploring the Naked Now

I have all too often observed this principle at work in my own life. To the extent that I neglect the practice of silence, solitude and contemplation, I find myself prey to all that is weak and shallow in me, and blinded, at least partially, to the agony of all that has been made (Romans 8:18ff).

I think this is partly why the Jesus Prayer has called to me so strongly all my adult life. Its words, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, confess the helplessness I feel in the face of my own shallowness, and my complete dependence on Jesus. The other side of this, of course, is best expressed by Br. Ramon SSF, in his now sadly out-of-print pamphlet Praying the Jesus Prayer (Marshall Pickering 1988):

It is difficult to speak of the aim or goal of [contemplative] prayer, for there is a sense in which it is a process of union which is as infinite as it is intimate…

But there are some things which we can say, which are derivative of that central core of ineffable experience. We can say that such prayer contains within itself a new theology of intercession. It is not that we are continually naming names before God, and repeating stories of pain, suffering and bereavement on an individual and corporate level, but rather that we are able to carry the sorrows and pains of the world with us into such contemplative prayer as opens before us in the use of the Jesus Prayer. God knows, loves and understands more than we do, and he carries us into the dimension of contemplative prayer and love, and effects salvation, reconciliation and healing in his own way, using us as the instruments of his peace, pity and compassion.

(For more on this last point, you might like to read my earlier post, Ostrov.)

Being Franciscan…

Thinking, as we move into this New Year, about my Franciscan vocation, and the call to prayer that has, ultimately, shaped all of my life, I have discovered two marvellous posts by the Church of Ireland priest Patrick Comerford, both addresses under the titles Saint Francis (1): Lifestyle for today? and Saint Francis (2): Community Life for today? given at the Francistide Observance of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, on Saturday 3 October 2009. Start with the first address here.

They are long addresses, but I would strongly urge you to read them in full. Canon Patrick speaks at length on our Rule of Life, on the Cross of San Damiano, and most importantly on the Franciscan call to rebuild the Church, and the life of the Church as community. He says:

Francis can be seen as being both Catholic and Evangelical. His conversion was the principal impetus for his mission, yet that mission included a call to the traditional church.

Francis valued the traditional expressions of Church life, yet his rule of life and his gathering of friars was then a fresh expression of church…

It is no wonder that as the tradition of religious communities was being explored once again, rediscovered, revived and rebuilt in the Anglican Communion in response to the Anglo-Catholic revival, many of those involved turned for inspiration to the Franciscan tradition.

The gentle approach to obedience in the Franciscan tradition has been described as a “middle way” in the monastic tradition, and so the Franciscan tradition has an immediate appeal to Anglicans of the Via Media.

The Daily Office, which is the office book of the Society of Saint Francis, was among the first to be fully up-dated with the Common Worship Lectionary, and so was used in the wider Anglican Communion. But it also provided the model for the offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer in Common Worship…

But Francis and Franciscan values also have a relevance to the wider, international and global community.

This is a world that has never been more in need of those Franciscan values of Peace, Poverty, and respect for the environment.

The Church exists to call the world into it not so much that the world may become the church, less so that the church may become the world, but that through the Church the world may enter into the Kingdom of God.

In age of a nuclear overkill, climate change and global poverty, Francis and his rule for his community, first shaped 800 years ago in 1209, continue to call us back again to the true values of Christian community and lifestyle.

But do read both addresses in full—my extracts here don’t begin to do them justice.

The rebirth of time…

When we celebrate New Year’s Day, we celebrate the rebirth of time.

  We wait for our God to do new things.

    We wait for who we are, and who we are to become.

      We wait for the coming of grace, for the unfolding of Mystery.

        We wait for the always bigger Truth.

          We wait for the vision of the Whole.

But we cannot just wait. We must pray. Our prayers then start naming and defining us.  When we hear our own prayers in our own ears and our own heart, we start choosing our deepest identity, our biggest future, and our best selves.

Richard Rohr, adapted from Beginner’s Mind

There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Luke 2:36-38

Lord, give us—give me—grace to live in the footsteps of Anna this coming year and always. Give me such a longing for your presence, such a thirst for the love and the mercy of Christ, that I will be content to live within prayer, without looking for any thing more…

Gentleness…

Let your gentleness draw others to peace, gentleness and concord. This is our vocation: to heal wounds, to bind what is broken, to bring home those who are lost.

Not to hurt our humble brethren [the animals] is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough.  We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it.

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

A Prayer for the New Year

God of the seasons, Lover of the ages,
Master of every moment:
You who are beyond time yet within all time.
We return to you what you have given to us —
the moments, the minutes, the hours, the days,
the weeks, the months, and the year of 2009.

Time has been gracious to us again,
and we thank you for freely giving us these human bodies,
these events, and these relationships.
We have lived another year and we have died another year,
and now you are granting us the beginnings of another.

We now hand over to you the blessed year, 2009,
with all that it gave us and all that it took from us,
knowing that both are necessary, just like our breath.
We trust you in both the givings and the takings,
the inhalings and the exhalings.

May every breath of 2010 be a breath of the Holy Spirit,
joyfully received and joyfully returned,
beginning with this one right now.

Amen.

Richard Rohr, ‘Midnight Prayer’ from the CAC Daily Meditation