Author Archives: Ned Lunn

Chapter 45: mistakes in the oratory

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If one makes a mistake in chanting a psalm, responsory antiphon, or in reading a lesson, he must immediately humble himself publicly.

How do you admit mistakes?

I loved the song and was excited when our music group decided to introduce it to our congregation in time for Christmas. I knew the songwriter and have deep respect for him and the group he is a part of, due to their theological rigour in writing worship songs/hymns. We began the song and it was engaging me intellectually as well as emotionally and spiritually. Then, we all sang the a line of the song and I was jolted from moment of praise…

“Surely that’s not right?!” I thought.

None else seemed to notice and they continued to sing. I stopped singing and went back to that line and tried to make sense of it. The songwriter was usually fairly solid theologically and so how was I mis-reading it. I went to the back of church and found a hymn book which I knew contained the song’s lyrics and turned to the relevant number. It read,

What kind of child causes heaven to sing. (Joel Payne, ‘What kind of throne’, RESOUNDworship, December 14 2014, http://www.resoundworship.org/song/what_kind_of_throne, administered by The Jubilate Group)

“Oh!” I thought, “that makes much more sense!” The worship band had merely missed out that important ‘g’ at the end; I didn’t need to worry that Joel Payne believed Jesus causes heaven to sin!

It was an easy mistake to make, I’ve missed letters out of words or made typos in liturgy that are embarrassing. I’ve stumbled over words in preaching and mis-read passages from the Bible which drastically change the Word of God. It’s not a problem, as long as you own and admit the mistake publicly to ensure people know that it was a mistake. This particular mistake, if not highlighted, could cause many of the congregation to start believing heresy.

Mistakes are there to be learnt from and part of that lesson is about the public admission of mistake. We don’t forget the strain it is to admit weakness and failure easily and this drives us to want to be changed. Mistakes don’t have to be feared or actively resisted. The problem of viewing mistakes in this way is that it creates a larger pressure to cover up or deny mistakes and hide the shame. If you live in a culture where mistakes are to be expected then you are more likely to admit them quickly and grow from them.

I am a perfectionist and so mistakes are difficult for me to accept but I am also an improviser and have experienced countless times mistakes that have been redeemed or been sources of great discoveries. The trick is not to be afraid of them nor to justify them as necessary in achievement. What I mean by that is it is just another way of denying a mistake if we respond to them by saying,

It will all turn out ok in the end.

Everything happens for a reason. If I hadn’t made that mistake this great thing wouldn’t have happened.

Mistakes are still mistakes and can cause damage and hurt; yes, they can be fixed and redeemed but that doesn’t excuse the mistake. The balance must be found where you admit and acknowledge the mistake and name it as wrong but not to see it as a definite ending.

Reflection

I find if you are quick to admit then people a more swift to forgive. My Mum taught me nip the mistake in the bud and it won’t flower into a deeper pain later. There is great truth in that.

In community the hardest thing to discover is how you, as a family, respond to mistakes. It is not ok to have low expectations of one another, we must always be seeking to do our best, but when someone slips up how a community treats that person is important. The onus, however, is on the person who made the mistake to grant a quick opportunity for everyone else to move on and forgive. If one leaves it un-acknowledged, the community cannot grant pardon and help the other to feel cleansed.

In modern day monasteries the practice is a beating on of the chest when a mistake is made and, if you are alone when it was done, then a sharing of it in public is done. This practice creates a right attitude to mistakes where it is seen as folly and can quickly be addressed before it grows to big and complicated and serious.

Loving God, we are sorry for the many mistakes we make on our walk of faith. May we keep short account with you and be open to your correction and tender grace to transform us each day. We thank you for your all powerful redemption and your faithfulness even to death to renew us and bring us to the resurrection to eternal life.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 44: how the excommunicated are to make satisfaction

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He who has been excommunicated from oratory and the community table is to prostrate himself in front of the oratory door when the Divine Office is concluding.

Do we need penance?

It all sounds very severe and humiliating to literally lie face down for an extended period of time in front of others. Two things to quickly note: one, to prostrate yourself has similar roots to the word ‘worship’ we prostrate ourselves before God, is this also ‘humiliating’? The second point is about the role of humiliation.

Humiliation means ‘to be humbled’ or ‘to be brought to a lowly position’. Prostrating oneself is going to the lowest one can go physically. What a wonderful enacting of a metaphysical positioning of the heart; we make visible that which is invisible, like a sacrament,

A Sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace, instituted for our justification (Cathech. Trident. II. i. 4)

Many commentators point out how alien this concept of physical manifestations of repentance is to our modern day sensibilities and it made me wonder, “why?”

Firstly there is a historical aspect to the thought of penance in this way. When we think of repentance we think of saying “sorry” but as my Mum used to say,

It’s no good just saying sorry, you have to mean it.

I’m afraid, Elton John, you might be wrong: ‘sorry’ isn’t the hardest word to say!

Repentance, in the Bible seems to require some physical acting out of the inward turning back, ultimately to God. John came to proclaim a baptism of repentance. To be baptised, therefore, is to physically and publicly enact your turning towards God with the symbolic burying (in the water) and the rising to new life (out of the water). As baptism cannot be repeated in fear of denying God’s eternal adoption of us into His Kingdom, the Early Church, and still in the Roman Catholic Church (amongst others), the role of penance became that symbol of re-turning after some sin or grievance had been made. Often these were a set of prayers or a pilgrimage to a particular holy site or relic.

During the time of the Crusades, however, the Church began to develop an idea of ‘indulgences’, a form of tax on repentance; one would pay for forgiveness/pardon from the Church as a form of penance. This was very lucrative and paid for the war against the Turks and the Ottoman Empire. Later, Pope Leo X needed funds to complete the building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and so encouraged official pardoners to ‘cash in’ to cover the costs of the building project. These abuses were one of the primary causes of Martin Luther’s Wittenberg protest which officially started the Reformation.

We, in the protestant West, feel uncomfortable with St. Benedict’s use of ‘satisfaction’ for grievances because it flies too close to penance and indulgences. We want to reject that and proclaim freedom from such arcane understandings but we can’t fully believe this freedom to be true. We still have, in post-reformation religion, the language of penal substitution. Penal Substitution is the idea that Christ, by his freely chosen and perfect sacrifice on the cross, was penalised for sins we, ourselves should suffer for. Christ satisfies the demands of justice and pays the price of sin; death. The language of this theory is so transactional: payment of debts, satisfying an angry God who demands we repay Him for grievances against Him. It is too karmic for me and not enough of the power grace.

Luther was protesting against a system which had abused this ‘transactional’ approach to forgiveness and so used the language understood by the people to say,

Christ has paid off your debts. You don’t need to pay money or do anything except accept the forgiveness. If you need to feel that the indulgence or penance is completed then think of it as Christ doing it for you.

This is correct; we don’t need to pay someone to earn forgiveness from God, it is freely given by His grace. The problem, however, is we have not fully grasped the reality of the end of the transactional view of God’s justice. Grace, in my reading of Scripture, doesn’t say Christ participated in a real transaction with a wrathful God who is waiting for us all to balance our books. Grace speaks of Christ belittling and revealing the weakness of such an approach altogether. God was not separate from the cross, He was on the cross. God wasn’t receiving payment for sins, He was entering into the stupidity of that sacrificial system to end it, making it obsolete.

I don’t think Christ was paying God for my sins because I don’t think God is needs something to balance out my bad deeds before he forgives; he surely isn’t that petty. God does not withhold his mercy, that’s the wonderful truth about grace.

This notion of substitution centres in on Paul’s words in Romans 6:23,

For the wages of sin is death…

Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t see where this literal idea comes from. I read these words as meaning that if we sin, i.e. we turn away from God, reject God, deny Him, we die. This makes sense if God is the giver and sustainer of life. God offers us, in relationship with Him, life and if we move away from the source of life we will die. Where did we get this notion that if we sin God will actively cut us off as a punishment?

To put it in another way, we don’t need to pay God for our sins because He isn’t asking for payment. The wages aren’t coming from God. We will receive death, not from God but as a natural consequence of refusing the payment of life. As Paul goes on to say in Romans 6:23,

…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We want to live under the stick and know punishment. God wants us to live in true freedom and to know His free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, the source of abundant life.

Try reading Matthew 25:31-46, the image of the sheep and the goats, without the concept of karma (we need to have more good deeds by our name than bad) or balance books or any form of transactional justice. We naturally want to see this view of judgement as God, sat on His throne in heaven, with a list seeing who’s been naughty and nice. God is not Santa so let’s start believing that fact! The wonderful truth about God’s grace is that He’s not counting. He offers us the free gift of life which we can receive with joy or opt out of.

St. Benedict’s proposed ‘satisfication’ may strike us as too petty and humiliating but some of us still hold too much to a similar view when we preach the cross as ‘satisfaction’ of an angry God.

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The Liberalism Delusion

The second aspect to why our modern sensibilities think this concept of physical manifestations of repentance is alien is cultural.

This Christmas there’s one book that I would really like (no pressure!) and that’s John Marsh’s book, ‘The Liberalism Delusion’. Regular readers of my blog will know my blatant disagreements with the form of liberalism prevalent in British culture today. John Marsh, in his synopsis of his book, sums up my questions concisely. He suggests that the flaws in liberalism are: ‘human nature is good and rational’, ‘the more freedom the better’, ‘morality is unnecessary’, ‘the individual is of overriding importance’, ‘greater equality is always beneficial’, ‘science is certain and benign’, ‘religion is untrue and harmful’, ‘history and tradition are unimportant’, ‘universalism and multiculturalism are beneficial’ and ‘we are shaped by our experiences not by our genes’.

I might, if I get hold of the book, write a full review of the book but for now it would be worth taking three of these ‘flaws’/‘delusions’ and outlining his proposition in our current discussion on penance and repentance.

Firstly, ‘human nature is good and rational’.

At the heart of liberalism – and of its forerunner the Enlightenment – is the rejection of the Judeo-Christian belief that human nature is flawed, believing instead that we are born good and wise; although later warped and corrupted by parents and society. These ideas became popular in the 1960s, especially in areas like education, which became child-centred. This led to the decline of discipline and undermined parental authority. However recent scientific discoveries in genetics – including the Human Genome Project – and in psychology have shown that human nature is indeed flawed. In religious jargon we are sinners; and science has proved it. (John Marsh, “‘The Liberal Delusion’ by John Marsh – synopsis”, Anglican Mainstream, December 2 2014, http://anglicanmainstream.org/the-liberal-delusion-by-john-marsh-synopsis/)

With this view of human nature, sin becomes an unnecessary and dirty, guilt inducing lie to keep us trapped, unable to flourish, rather than the fact of our own brokenness and need for healing. If human’s are essentially good then we are innocent until proven guilty. The problem, however, is that liberalism also promotes the idea that ‘morality is unnecessary’.

If we are good we do not need morality, restraints, regulations or religion. Many liberals regard moral rules as unproven, unscientific and having a traditional or religious basis; they maintain children should be free to make up their own minds on morals, without the influence of parents or schools. So undermining morality is consistent with liberal principles; the outcome is a society that is non-judgemental, value-free and amoral. (John Marsh, “‘The Liberal Delusion’ by John Marsh – synopsis”)

If we desire a society which is value-free and non-judgemental then the sort of penance that St. Benedict is proposing is bound to be out-dated and alien; this is religion at its most harmful! The wisdom of the Christian tradition, however, witnesses to our deep need to enact, embody and manifest that which is internal. We are symbolic creatures who benefit from ‘making visible that which is invisible’. This tradition of physicalising repentance is much more than proving to one another the truth and completeness of a transformation or ‘rebirth’, it is also about proving it to ourselves. We mark in history, physically, the momentous occasion of a decision; we sign a document, we submerge and re-emerge from water we gather witnesses to testify to a declaration of belief and change of heart/mind.

Our liberal culture would refuse this, however, because ‘history and tradition are unimportant’.

Many liberals regard the past as an era of ignorance, superstition and darkness best forgotten, and strive to free people from history and tradition. So in liberal societies there is a tendency for the past to be forgotten, and for history to be downgraded as a subject in schools. However history is necessary for our self-understanding and identity.

In my mind there is a more dangerous characteristic of our liberal society and it, ironically, shares this with other fanatical ideologies such as fascism and communism and that’s not only the forgetting of the past but the re-writing or re-interpreting of the past.

I have already outlined my discomfort of the projecting onto of the story of St Aelred of Rievaulx, reframing his ideas and ministry as overtly pro-homosexuality. Some have even gone as far as proclaiming St Aelred as ‘gay’. It’s wrong. Imagine, if I were in fifty years time, to promote the idea that Alan Turing was straight and he the way he lived his life was not what he truly wanted, there would be uproar and rightly so. If we view our travel through time as one of pure progress culturally, always becoming more and more enlightened then we will always feel the need to correct the stupid, narrow-minded ancestors and re-interpret them saying to ourselves,

What they meant to say was…

We cannot tell what they were thinking or seeing. We cannot teach them how to look at the world because they were different to us, not worse, different. We cannot colonise the past with our culture.

Indeed, when you explore monasticism as just one example, you discover that our fore-fathers and mothers made discoveries and solved problems we are struggling with today. There is a well-spring of wisdom we’d do well to draw from the past. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we reject the past as uninformed and bigoted; maybe it is us who have stepped back in our understanding of the world and ourselves as humanity.

Reflection

Making amends is a natural desire of human beings. We want people to show us that they regret their actions or words against us. Before we forgive we want to know that we can trust them again. In this way, the ‘satisfaction’ St. Benedict is proposing is legitimate and understandable. The problem comes when we project that onto God in His dealings with us.

God does not require us to prove to Him our repentance for He knows our hearts and knows when we are truly turning to Him or not. Penance is for each other not God. In this way the ‘satisfaction’ is about reconciling the community together and not about the earning the reality of God’s mercy upon the sinner. The prostrating is not about earning forgiveness but about rebuilding trust and re-bonding the division made by the transgression.

In our churches there are times when we divide ourselves and others off from one another. We say something, or do something which hurts, disappoints and upsets a brother or sister. Saying “sorry” doesn’t rebuild trust, it may help, but it doesn’t complete it. Physicalising regret communicates a genuine change of heart and mind to the other and rebuilds relationship. If someone is unable to suffer public humiliation they will never achieve humility, which, as we are continually reminded of in the Rule of St. Benedict, is the very heart of healthy communities and the very centre of the Kingdom of God.
Merciful Father, we confess our sinfulness and praise you for your unending love, grace and forgiveness of us. We thank you that you are the source of life and we are invited to drink from that well. We thank you for the perfect revelation of your love through Jesus Christ on the cross. We thank you for suffering in that way to show us your character and desire for relationship with us.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 43: late-comers to the Divine Office and meals

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Immediately upon hearing the signal for the Divine Office, all work must cease.

What’s wrong with being late?

When I was at college we had a long term guest in the community from Lesotho (near South Africa). He was a wonderful man of God and it was a privilege to get to know him over the six months he was with us. He had one cultural tendency which is famous in this country; ‘African timing’. This was particularly evident at Morning Prayer when, fifteen minutes into a twenty-twenty five minute Office, in he would walk and take his usual place by the door.

He was once called up on this trait, to which he responded,

I pray everywhere and will join you when I join you.

There’s a few of things happening in this response which I would like to unpack in relation to this week’s chapter in the Rule of St. Benedict: how lateness can be interpreted, the reason why there are set times for prayer and why promptness is essential, so let’s take them one at a time.

On our wedding day, my father in law spoke about my wife’s lateness; she was born two weeks later than her due date and, my father in law commented,

She’s been late ever since!

Her brother, one of my best friends, is just the same and I’ve shaped my life around this different timing. At my less patient and understanding times I have responded to their lateness in, I suspect, a very natural way; I have found myself feeling unimportant to them. Why are they late? What has happened which has stopped them from getting here? Whatever it is must be more important than meeting me. When I discover that it is curling hair (that’s my wife and not my brother in law!) or cleaning a bedroom you can feel like a second thought. It’s as if they’d rather be doing something else than meeting me or being with me.

Of course they don’t see it this way and it is not true that they’d rather be vacuuming a house than making the allotted time for meeting me but when you’re the one sat twiddling your thumbs, unable to start something in case you get interrupted, you can feel powerless to their ‘whims’. This is the problem with lateness: it is a power play. Lateness creates an imbalance in a relationship because one person refuses to be changed by the desire of another whilst the second party has committed and become beholden to the first.

My Lesotho friend, without knowing it, insulted the rest of the community by communicating a lack of commitment to us, choosing, rather to prioritise his own desires above ours.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself,

But the set times of Morning Prayer are set, not by the community but by tradition and if it doesn’t work for a community then it should change. That time isn’t holier than other times!

It is true that many people ask for times for prayers and other community activities to change to suit the changing preferences of the current members but this opens up the second issue, the reason why there are set times for prayer.

Morning Prayer is not about us. Morning Prayer is not the time we arrange to suit us, it is a time that demands us to prioritise God over and above everything else. It may seem at times to be arbitrary but it trains us to be disciplined in our relationship with God. It may challenge some of us whose view of God is of a Being whose love for us accept everything we are and do and wouldn’t change us for the world. Unfortunately God demands everything of us and wants our commitment to Him because our relationship with Him is the thing which will change us and ultimately save us.

It may seem obvious to many to say this but, prayer is not about us turning to God and bending His will to get our way. Krish Kandiah in his latest post about the new Star Wars trailer, comments,

To be honest too many people try to use prayer in the same way that the Jedi and the Sith use the force. People often say prayer is powerful. But I know that in war time both sides will often be praying for completely opposite things. So unlike the force a Christian understanding of prayer puts all the power in God’s hands not in the person praying, nor in prayer itself but in God. Prayer is a means of speaking to God inviting him into a situation that his will is done. We pray asking not that some impersonal force is wielded by us, but rather we ask that God our heavenly father intervenes in our situation and we place ourselves at his disposal (Krish Kandiah, “5 things to learn from the force awakens trailer”, November 28 2014, http://www.krishk.com/2014/11/5-things-to-learn-from-the-force-awakens-trailer/

Morning Prayer, along with the other times of set prayer, are there to establish a rhythm to change how we structure our day, not around our own desires but around God’s. This is not about arbitrarily doing the will of an institution it is about a counter cultural denial of self and offering ourselves to the disposal of God.

In the communal life we should no longer consider ourselves doing anything alone but in corporation with others. This is particularly true in prayer. Yes, there is a need for private prayer but the set times of prayer are as much about placing our lives, as a community, into the will of God as our individual lives into it. We have, by our commitment to the community, begun the process of disposing of our own wills to the community which, to save it from being a cult, together hands it continually over to the will of God in prayer and study.

My African brother, despite admitting to always praying failed to see the significance of the communal aspect our prayers together. This leads to the third and final aspect to unpack about lateness to prayer, why promptness is essential.

Promptness in itself is not essential but it is rather about a deeper thing that promptness communicates: obedience. Terrence Kardong writes,

The circumstances of ancient life made punctuality quite a different thing than it does for us today. There were no mechanical clocks to keep an eye on, much less digital devices to regulate life down to the second. In the pretechnological age, life was lived by the rhythm of the sun, which changed from season to season. RB 47.1 indicates that the monastic horarium is personally controlled by the abbot, and so a response to the signal is not an exercise in the virtue of promptness but in obedience. Thus it is not entirely correct to characterize Benedict as someone interested in timetables and efficiency; he is more concerned about wholehearted willingness to answer the call of God in the moment. (Terrence Kardong, ‘Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary’ (Minnesota: The Order of St Benedict, Inc., 1996) p.353)

We see again and again in the Rule of St. Benedict that the heart of discipleship is obedience. The Christian community should be one that lives out the transformative life in the Spirit of the servant hearted Son of God, who looked to the will of his Father. We, like the first disciples, are called immediately to drop our lives, controlled by our vision and understanding, and follow Christ, obediently.

Reflection

Obedience is a dirty concept in our increasingly liberal, anti-authoritarian culture. Those in positions of responsibility have betrayed our trust and those who are meant to be servants have gained power and use it unflinchingly to pursue their own wants and needs. The solution is not to create new sticking plaster remedies but to look to the insights and wisdom of tradition.

Lord Singh of Wimbledon, in a recent debate on the place of religion in society, made this helpful point,

Religious teachings are essentially preventive. Without such teachings we tend to look to sticking-plaster solutions. Today, the response to domestic violence is to build more refuges. The response to drunken and loutish behaviour is, “Let’s extend licensing hours”; to rising drugs problems, “Let’s legalise the use of drugs”; and, to an increasing number of people in prisons, “Let’s build more prisons”. Let us extend this line of thinking to the behaviour of little junior who greets visitors to the house by kicking them in the shins. Solution: issue said visitors with shin pads as they enter the front door.

He went on to suggest,

…we have thrown our religious instructions to one side in constructing remedies to social problems that ignore deeper issues of right, wrong and responsibility—the essence of religious teachings.

God created the Church, the community of disciples, as a means of protecting and growing His people. There are always criticisms that can be made of the Church, globally, denominationally, nationally and locally and it is not perfect (it will always be penultimate until the establishing of the Kingdom of God on Earth) but the solution is not to leave and start again. It is easy to criticise the Church as being irrelevant, petty or, at worse, abusive but for me the Church is really the people and that includes me as a member. The Church changes when we change and the greatest but most costly change is our obedience to one God and to one another. We must learn afresh what it means to commit to life in community.

A brief comment to some close to me who are currently debating the many failings of the Church:
The Church is a community of disciples who obey the call of God on their life. That call is to be daily renewed and transformed into the likeness of Christ who has lived the life which brings true freedom. We all, however, continually fail at this but we have committed to the work of transformation. This work is ongoing and can only be done in the cut and thrust of true relationship and godly society with others. The pain and heartache of these relationships require a commitment which holds us, sometimes imprisons us, to stay and deal with the conflict. It is too easy to leave and start again, forming a community around what we find helpful and befitting – it is not your Church it is God’s and He has called you to serve and not to be served. It is too easy to blame others for our inability to connect but the truth is we all must learn what obedience beyond our own preference and desires looks and feels like.

How quickly do we drop our lives and what we want to respond wholeheartedly to the call of God, however undesirable it is? Are we arriving late for God and assuming we are more important? Do we relegate God to following us round and serving our whims rather than the other way round?

Father God, accept my heartfelt apology for the many times I turn to you assuming you to serve me and my will rather than disposing myself upon your perfect and redeeming will. Correct in me my wayward heart and form to be a more obedient servant to you and your Kingdom.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 42: no talk after Compline

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Monks should try to speak as little as possible.

Why silence?

There is an almost constant stream of chatter going through my mind most of the day; there are lists of things to do being calculated, reflections and processing events, creating ideas and writing exercises all being churned away inside my brain as I walk around, sit quietly and even when I pray. It sometimes feels like my brain is producing the Window’s hourglass or Apple’s spinning ball as I process the world around me.

When it comes to prayer, finding a silence in which to encounter and hear from God, is tricky (on some days nearer to impossible!) Before I begin the liturgy I try to quieten the inner chatter using a entering prayer like the Jesus prayer or repeating ‘Maranatha’ slowing my breathing down and settling into a slower rhythm. The chatter begins to slow (if I concentrate) and we begin the liturgy, familiar and comforting; it uses just enough brain power to focus me more and, at times, I fall into the silence.

Of course this doesn’t always happen and the chatter is so overwhelming that I’m lucky if I can even remember the liturgy. It is a common view that we live too frantic lives. I don’t want to add to the reams and reams of paper and the gigabytes of webspace dedicated to showing us all how busy we are and the need to slow down. I’ve said it to myself so often, I’ve heard people tell me, as if it were simple, I’ve preached it from the pulpit and I’ve written it in more than one article; why is it so difficult?

The inner chatter is comforting, I think; it is a form of company in moments of aloneness. We are naturally social animals and we crave companions and so when we are denied that fellowship we fill the emptiness with fictional voices or with our own creative thoughts. Even the dye-hard introverts amongst us fill the silence with dreams and thoughts because, the truth is, the silence is frightening. In the silence we must face our true self without any of correction or pretence; ironically the true self is the last thing we want to see.

If your life is centred on yourself, on your own desires and ambitions, then asserting those desires and ambitions is the way you try to be true to yourself. So self-assertion becomes the only way of self expression. If you simply assert your own desires, you may have the illusion of being true to yourself. But in fact all your efforts to make yourself more real and more yourself have the opposite effect: they create a more and more false self.This self assertion is false because it cuts you off from other people. (Abbot Christopher Jamison, ‘Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life’ (London: Phoenix, 2007) p.85

The discipline set out in the Rule of St. Benedict should never be seen as an end in and of itself for that is a distortion of his intention. Discipline is used in order to steer the monk into a space where they can discover deep truths, hidden from others; it is this space of encounter with God which is the goal. Last week we discussed how cravings for satisfaction can drive us from real discoveries and here it is our inner chatter which is the distraction. Enforcing silence is to create an atmosphere where we are forced to face the silence, to fight through the dread and fear to discover the resurrecting new life beyond the deepest darkness and silence.

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfilment of my existence. Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation’ (New York: New Directions, 1972) p.35-36)

The call to true silence is a dangerous journey and should not be rushed into. It is a treacherous path which requires, like all journeys, preparation, the right equipment and knowledge of the route. It doesn’t take much reading on contemplative prayer to know that this is a calling reserved for experienced and specific disciples. This doesn’t deny the rest of us an experience or a seeking after a form of silence but we tread that path with caution.
The rise of mindfulness classes, particularly in urban centres, concerns me. The basis of this, as far as my reading and experience shows, is based in focussing on self and creating a form of vacuum in which to exist. The danger with this, in spiritual terms, is that with no direction we can be seized by anything; demons, destructive thought, wayward emotions, call them what you like. In this way it is as Jesus describes it,

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armour in which he trusted and divides his plunder…
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” (Luke 11:21-26)

To return to Thomas Merton’s words, we all seem so desperate to find our true self but this only exists in the existence of God and so, if we want to gaze on our true self, we must gaze on God. The abyss that we discover if we silence the inner chatter should not remain empty for into the vacuum will flood all manner of thing and in the place where mindfulness takes you you’re defenceless against the slippery darkness that can easily overwhelm. God abhors a vacuum and we must, if we are to engage in this sort of prayer, to invite God to fill it; even if it is with ‘the cloud of unknowing’ (a classic on this subject).

This is where the reading of suitable material aids the community into an atmosphere of silence. It may seem contradictory to say, in one breath, be silent, and in the other listen to readings from ‘the Collations, the Lives of the Father or something else uplifting.’ For those of us who struggle with the silence and are not equipped to defend ourselves in the darkness of our own souls, filling the silence with directional material to guide us the treacherous path to the edge of pure silence to gaze on God is considerably helpful.

Reflection

True silence is hard to achieve for it is a form of death. In the centre of it we all discover the existence of God who grants, by knowing Him, knowing our true self, ‘in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfilment of my existence.’

Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are “death” – a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance… Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life, as we recognise once again that we need to pray hard and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light. (Thomas Merton, ‘Contemplative Prayer’ (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005) p.40)

The path to such discovery is a dangerous journey and should not be entered into lightly or without the right spiritual equipment for the task. There are unfriendly foes to battle with, snares and stumbling blocks which can cause you immense damage and pain.

In the context of parish life this form silence is not to be completely ignored rather we should be practising it in order that we can control our inner chatter like we need to control our inner cravings. Discipline in prayer and contemplation leads us to discovery of who we are in God and is therefore, the path to the new life we proclaim.

Creating guided space to begin the process of entering into the silence is essential for nay Christina community. This should be, in my mind, begun with concentrated reading of ‘uplifting’ material: Scripture or spiritual classics such as the Collations or the Life of the Fathers. Each disciple who commits to exploring the inner life must be accompanied by an experienced traveller and these should be made available to each in the form of small groups leaders.

In this way we can begin to form our life together around prayer and study as we resource ourselves for mission and worship.

God of the silence, I invite you into the poverty and emptiness of my life to fill it with your presence by your Holy spirit. Fill the dust of my existence like you did in the very beginning. May I, my false self, decrease as you, my true identity, increase. I step into the silence fearful for it is your awesome presence I seek to gaze upon; that same presence which Moses desired and you blessed him by walking by Him.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 41: dining hours

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”Let the abbot temper and dispose all so that souls may be saved and the brothers’ work may be performed without reason for complaining”

Who is in control?

It has begun to feel quite odd to spend so much time outlining and structuring times of eating for a community. With our modern Western relationship with food, particularly in a place of affluence, having control over someone’s eating habits is highly parental and is seen as slightly oppressive. There is a part of us that reacts to this seeming misuse of power on the part of the abbot when it comes to our basic desire to eat and drink but is this not a challenge to our culture?

Our culture has an issue with eating; we either eat too much or too little. Our relationship with food is out of balance and it seems many of us cannot control our eating patterns.

The most accurate figures we are aware of are those from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence. These suggest that 1.6 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder, of which around 11% are male. However, more recent research from the NHS information centre showed that up to 6.4% of adults displayed signs of an eating disorder (Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, 2007). This survey also showed that a quarter of those showing signs of an eating disorder were male, a figure much higher than previous studies had suggested.
It is estimated that of those with eating disorders:

10% of sufferers are anorexic,

40% are bulimic, and

the rest fall into the EDNOS category, including those with binge eating disorder.

(from the B-eat website, “Facts and Figures”, 11th November 2014, http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/facts-and-figures/)

We are a society who lacks control. We desire freedom but we don’t know how to handle it. This is yet another cost of the individualistic culture, where the self is raised to god-like status to be satisfied and indulged.

Discipline, in this context, then, becomes counter-cultural. Obedience to an authority outside of the self is not only a challenge but a threat to the basis of the whole world-view. That’s why, nestled in the text about amount and times of eating, there’s a simple statement about the abbot saving souls because this is about more than just food; this is about our issues with control.

“But wait,” I hear you cry, “Is this prison-like system of withholding food the solution? Won’t we, by handing over decisions as to when and what we eat to another, risk abuse of that power?”

Yes.

The risk is big and uncomfortable and I’m sure that abuse has happened throughout the long history of the Benedictine Rule but its a risk still worth making because the other thing this brings up for us is the issue over relationship and covenant.

We no longer appreciate the depth of relationships beyond the pornographic. I deliberately use this evocative word to describe our attitude to each other. I see many of us (and I am very much included) making connections with others in controlled and calculated ways. We weigh up the pros and cons of a potential relationship, we romanticise or functionalise indiscriminately in the way we select prospective friends or partners. This places a distance between us and others and is done in order that we remain self-autonomous which is the ideal of our culture. Others are objects to be observed and handled; we remain the only subject.

I found an article that explores, what Sam Black calls, ‘The Porn Circuit’. He suggests that when we think about doing something stimulating our brain releases dopamine which gives us a sense of craving as well as a sharp focus to remember where we can access the stimulation. As well as dopamine the brain releases norepinephrine which is a form of adrenaline giving us a sense of expectation and preparation for stimulation. Sexual stimulation releases oxytocin and vasopressin which are hormones that help to secure pair bonding and intimacy with another by cataloguing this pleasurable experience with a particular object. Afterwards the body then releases endorphins and serotonin creating an all round feeling of elation. With each experience of euphoria our brains begin to associate the craving with the specific source of that craving.

Porn, this article suggests, ‘short circuit the system’.

Multiple problems happen when porn is used. First, instead of forming a deep connection to a person, your brain ends up “bonding” to a pornographic experience. Your brain remembers where the sexual high was experienced, and each time you desire sexual stimulation, you feel a sharp sense of focus: I’ve got to go back to the porn.

Our culture, I think, is doing something similar. In order to achieve individual, self autonomous people a culture must minimise the importance of pair-bonding and objectify the world around them: everything can be sold and bought and possessed. In this situation if that ‘object’ fails to create craving and release of hormones then we discard it and look for a bigger/better object. By asserting to ourselves that we are the only subject everything else becomes object and an emotional distance is created.

These hormonal releases in our brains are able to be controlled if we train our brain. This requires discipline but we understand discipline as severe and unnecessary so we rely on controlling them ourselves through medical intervention or we refuse to acknowledge a problem with being controlled by our hormones. Authority is placed internally and this means we are able to trick ourselves into thinking we’re in control but we’re clearly not. When we acknowledge our lack of control this releases similar hormones and we get caught in addictive and abusive behaviours.

There is similar chemical patterns in the eating of food. It is important to eat and so our brain releases hormones to ensure we are able to feed our bodies. There is nothing un-healthy about that. We do, however, unconsciously attribute the satisfaction of eating with particular emotional states which shouldn’t go together such as isolation and this is where we get ‘comfort eating’ from.

In the light of these brief, layman’s reflection on cultural impact on our brains, this outlining of the distribution of food sets up, for me, a training to ‘apply our heart (inner part) unto wisdom’ (Psalm 90:12) What the Rule of St. Benedict is doing by placing control in the hands of the abbot is establishing a culture of interdependence where covenant relationships can be formed over peaceful existence and not attach pleasure with food. In our day, this is radically counter-cultural and, in my mind, a solution to the hormonally charged pattern of life offered by the individualistic culture of the West.

Reflection

Where, in the context of a congregation, are we challenging our need for personal control? Where are the opportunities to deny ourselves satisfaction of cravings? Where are we opening ourselves to healthy pair-bondings which will sustain and bring life? Where is the questioning of desire and a training in discipline?

In this section of the Rule of St. Benedict, as we reflect on very practical issues of life, I am continually reminded of the shared roots to the words ‘discipleship’ and ‘discipline’. To be a disciple is to go through a process of discipling, correction of thoughts and behaviours and instructions as to a new way of life. We are to reform and transform which will require a de-construction of our mind; or as Paul says it,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

The image of the Body of Christ must be deeply re-thought. We must talk more about how the Spirit challenges us to break down our self-autonomy and become united with others in risk and trust. Passages like 1 Corinthians 12 must be re-focussed away from the objects (spiritual gifts) and back onto the subject (the one Spirit) and our identity must not be connected with the object (the possible ministry/calling) but with the subject (the one Spirit). In this space we are able to fully embrace the Lord’s yoke as he teaches us in the ways of discipleship.

Gracious God, you came to lead us into new life; a life different from the patterns of this world. You came to make disciples to go into all the world as a sign of your kingdom. You broke down self-built, self-actualising, self-centred, selves and created one Body by your Spirit. Teach us, discipline us that we may be saved from ourselves and shaped into the likeness of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 40: drink apportionment

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”Everyone has his proper gift from God, one this, another thus” (1 Cor. 7:7)”

How do we welcome whilst teaching?

Last week we reflected on sharing and how, if we looked at our points of excess, be it food, money, whatever, then this seemingly impossible task of fairly distributing resources may become easier. This week, we read the same principle is to be taken with drink as it did with food and monks should consume in moderation. St. Benedict points out his awareness that in some religious orders, alcohol is forbidden but for his community (in Italy!) wine was a cultural drink; it’s like telling Russians they can’t drink vodka!

What we see here is not a blanket refusal for all things that are potentially harmful but a reliance on common sense. The Church, throughout history, has struggled with controlling its members’ destructive behaviours and have erred, at times, into overly strict control of all to help the few. We can think of the Puritans who saw some dangers in excessive frivolity, which on rare occasions led to sexual immorality; their response was to cut all frivolity and fun from everyone to protect against potential sexual immorality.

Discipline is difficult to police: one can be too heavy handed or not directive enough. Some people struggle with substance abuse, while others find certain situations difficult to control their anger. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking the way to help is to have a tight control on what is permitted and what is not. In order that some do not feel picked out the ‘ban’ becomes generalised and anti-productive for those who can remain disciplined in the specific situations. The church then becomes a place where there’s a lot of ‘you can’t’s and we spend more time policing the rules rather than worship and prayer.

In our current cultural climate, however, I see the opposite danger being played out. In response to a Victorian, over-bearing, clear cut, black/white mentality when it comes to moral righteousness; there is a lasez-faire approach to ethics and morality. In our desire to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘welcoming’ we reject any ‘barriers’ or demands put upon people who come through our door. We struggle to set behavioural rules out of fear we will be seen as judgemental or moralistic. We look at our fore-bearers and see a strictness and we want to set ourselves apart from them.

The problem with this approach is that we have missed out on a third way of managing temptation and behaviours. St. Benedict never shies away from enforcing expectations and demanding everything from the monks in his community but these ‘rules’ are focussed on principles and character rather than on practicalities. Leadership and spiritual guidance is less about dictating the pragmatic things we can and can’t do, policies and guidelines which must be followed to the letter and more about the general climate in which virtues are nourished.

If we take alcohol as an example. There are some who struggle to drink alcohol in moderation. The causes for this differ from one person to another and so it is hard to produce specific guidelines that all will find helpful all of the time. If, however, you see guidelines more about establishing a direction for transformation of character rather than prescribing detailed pragmatic actions then they can protect all people whilst enabling flexibility within it. Instead of saying, for example,

No one is to drink alcohol because it could, for some, lead to temptation to excessive drunkenness and violent behaviour.

We could write,

We want to encourage one another to be reliant on God and to be aware of His direction of us at each moment. Alcohol, when drunk excessively, hinders us from being obedient to God’s call. Therefore, alcohol must be drunk with care and consideration. If another is deemed to be drinking excessively, those in authority are to care for them by removing the temptation from them. It maybe appropriate, after the effects of the alcohol has worn off, for the leaders to discuss the reasons for their drunkenness to see if there is a way in which they can be encouraged to remain sober for the Lord.

The skill St. Benedict shows in his Rule is to have a clear endpoint in sight: the final judgement. Everyone in his community signs up to being transformed and changed, each day into the likeness of Christ. To be a part of the community is to commit to the hard work of discipleship which asks us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Drunkenness and excessive behaviour in any context is a distraction from prayer and character formation and therefore is enforced not by specifics but under the general encouragement to a life of discipleship.

In order to develop a distinctive culture of discipleship a community needs to be clear as to their priorities. These are not pragmatic step by step things; it is about the ultimate end goal. The Church has this set out in Jesus Christ. The vision for each congregation is the same: to seek God in our whole life, to intentionally invite the Holy Spirit to transform us from our old selves, into new creation, through obedience to prayer, study, dialogue and worship and to live as part of God’s distinctive Kingdom in the world. All pragmatic decisions and policies must encourage each disciple to participate in this work and that will require one thing for one member and another thing for the next but the direction is the same.

There are many who are taking down the Church’s specific demands placed on people’s behaviours to encourage them to become part of the Church or to at least see the Church as relevant and in line with the culture we live in but in doing so have thrown the metaphorical baby out with the bathwater. We have misunderstood the heart of the rules and guidelines. We have rejected the teaching wholesale and we have ignored Jesus who demands everything. Jesus asks those who would follow him to leave their livelihoods, families, their safety and security; in fact he asks us to die to ‘self’ in order to be his disciples. He does not ask this of everyone but for those who he calls to ministry. There is a difference between the expectation and attitude Jesus has to the crowd and the expectations he has on his disciples and he is clear on the distinction.

Are you a member of the crowd or a disciple?

A disciple is expected to work, to change, to learn to live obediently to the challenge of the life of Christ but the reward is great. The crowd only sees a glimpse of the Kingdom but remain enslaved to the world until they make their own commitment to discipleship.

As a theatre director I directed actors, not by telling them precisely where to stand and how to speak but rather by keeping my eyes fixed on the principles by which we agreed to work and the character the actor was trying to perform. There were some general things which were fixed and to move away from them, even slightly, would be a distraction. Within this framework the actors were more free to play and discover. It is a paradox that artists appreciate more than others; if you want to be more creative, put up more guidelines. A musician returns to the scales for this reason, the painter primes the canvas, the actor studies the character/play. Discipline and obedience are key to developing as an artist and the same is true of disciples.

Reflection

We can all agree that we need to create the right climate for discipleship to take place but there is a difference of approaches as to how to achieve it. For some it is about setting the right pragmatic actions. They work on each step and encourage people to achieve one after the other in an order. As each step of change is difficult to take people get caught up in the mechanics of those single step and our sights are reduced to a few manageable steps ahead. When difficultly strikes it is hard to discern what to do next and the choices as to which step to take in order to move forward becomes a complex and cloudy.

The alternative is to to set the momentum and the direction of the journey. You don’t need to know each step in advance but you know the trajectory. This means your head is up and some steps are made without even thinking about it. There is a momentum which drives people on. There will be times when you go off course but at different moments there will be a leader who raises everyone’s head to fix their eyes on the horizon not yet reached.

This frees the community of the Church from setting specific mundane requirements on its people and frees them to discern for themselves, within the framework of the community ethos, what they need to do in order to reach the goal. It is not about strict micromanagement nor is it the liberal, distanced observation of others; this is about dialogue and encouragement to journey the costly path of discipleship whose aim is to encounter God and to know His divine will for our lives.

Heavenly Father, whose will is perfect freedom. Your son challenged the Pharisees who lived at the law in action but were far from you in their heart. Your son also challenged those who were enslaved by their own desires who led them first in one direction and then in another. Your son, our way, our truth and our life, ha been set as the pioneer and perfecter of the faith and we commit our lives to following him, to being shaped by him.

Come, Lord Jesus

What is Love?

Originally written for The Big Bible Project as part of their focus on Song of Solomon (published on October 28th 2014)

I’ve been reflecting on our culture’s view of ‘love’ recently. Love is used all over the media; from its use in marketing to advice columns, to status updates and in tabloid headlines. It is used in popular culture as a generally accepted, shared point of reference when it comes to social cohesion: we all think ‘love’ is a good thing.

But what do we mean? How do we love?

‘To love our neighbours as ourselves’ has been replaced by the seemingly synonymous concept of ‘treating others as you would like to be treated.’ No one questions someone’s ‘love’ for something or someone; who’d dare do that, for no one knows someone else feelings and cannot judge the truth in their experience. This is where I become uncomfortable.

Our culture has allowed ‘love’ to be singularly an individual experience with little to no relation to others. The important thing, for our culture, is that you ‘love’; no one can stop that ‘love’. We talk about ‘love at first sight’ as if ‘love’ cannot be judged or fully grasped and therefore fully shared. Romance, sentimentality, poetic emotions that overwhelms us and we cannot voice or articulate them; these are now what ‘love’ is about. It is interesting that ‘romantcism’, as a movement, is defined as,

a movement in the arts and literature which originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.

The central tenants of this understanding of ‘love’ has redefined and shaped our culture so that ‘love’ is now a subjective and individual experience.

The Song of Solomon is a passionate exploration of ‘love’ but about whom is it written? Is it about God and his people? Or is it about two humans, passionate about each other and desiring a deeply sexual union? Many have argued both sides and I find that interesting; for no other reason than we find it difficult to define different ideas of ‘love’. We talk about ‘love’ a lot but if we took more time thinking and defining what we mean, I think we’d realise how little we really want to know about it.

There is a real problem with having just one word for this complex experience, we call ‘love’. We ‘love’ pizza and we ‘love’ our friends and we may even ‘love’ another person to commit our lives to them. The issue arises when we cannot be specific about what we mean by ‘love’. Take this disturbing video from the USA about a man who is dating his car!

(Please be warned: some may find this video disturbing)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/my-strange-addiction-cars_n_1268798.html

It was CS Lewis, in his book ‘The Four Loves’, which highlighted the Greek’s use of four separate words for ‘love’: storge, philia, eros and agape. Eros is the sexual love which often gets mixed up with our concept of pure love (this is probably why sex sells!) This is the most powerful and the most all-consuming of the ‘love’ experiences but it is, as Lewis puts it, the ultimate in ‘need-love’ where there is a sense of possession; either to possess another or to be possessed by another. This need, even to be possessed, is a dark temptation which can hide itself behind a false sense that it is sacrificing itself to the other when actually it is striving to have itself justified by the other.

It is ‘agape/love’ which the Bible calls us to and is in fact a much rarer experience than most of think. We have softened ‘agape/love’ to be synonymous with our more frequent experience of storge, philia and eros so that it fits in with our post-romanticism culture. This is seen most in our reading of 1 Corinthians 13 (the famous ‘wedding reading’),

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NIV)

We so often feel like we can divide this ‘agape/love’ into components and we say to ourselves,

Well, if I show patience, then I’m being loving.

or,

I managed to not shout at them for hurting me; so I showed them love.

Whereas, I suspect, this passage is actually describing this ‘agape/love’ as a complete thing. In order for something to be ‘agape/love’ it needs to be all of these things or it is not ‘agape/love’.

With the rise of the romantic movement which came out of the Enlightenment, we have developed, as a culture, into a highly individualised society and this has eroded most understandings of communal relationships. We have allowed the concept of ‘love’ to become primarily about gaining an experience for ourself rather than relationship with others.

Online relationships can easily be romanticised with our popular culture, media and even shared social narratives shaping our concept of love. We read the Bible through the lens of post-romantic Western culture and abuse the revolutionary and divine experience of ‘agape/love’ which is totally other focussed. This ‘agape/love’ has been perfectly revealed in Jesus and we must allow his love to challenge our understanding of what love is and to shape us to be transformed by it.

Jesus never commanded us to ‘love ourselves’ because he knows how easy that is to blind us to the real love of God and the love of others. The command to ‘love our neighbours as ourselves’ assumes we love ourselves and never commands us to do it. To love ourself doesn’t mean we have positive emotional thoughts about ourself but is about where our focus is. Due to our cultural bias to individualism and subjectivity this means we’re all obsessed, both positively and negatively, with ourselves unable to enter into true, healthy relationships with others. What God is calling us to, is not healthy opinions about ourselves but about a life focussed on him and other people. It is not about having a positive self image, it is about not having a self image at all so we can love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, uncontaminated with a sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’.

Chapter 39: food apportionment

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…care must be taken against excessive eating.

Why do we struggle so much to share?

There are statistics lining the internet about wealth distribution and figures which highlight the disparity between the wealthier parts of society and the poorer. Economic inequality has been a curse of humanity ever since man discovered the concept of possession.

Why do we struggle so much to share?

We have, built within us, a survival instinct which grows from experiences of lack. We experience hunger (for however long or short a time) and we remember that, at one point, we were unable, for whatever reason, to access basic sustenance. This sensation remains with us and we teach ourselves and our offspring that the world is ultimately a place of scarcity and we must fight for the resources available to us to stay alive.

Despite developed political systems and economic theories the thing the world is really scarce in is a system or idea which encourages a healthy and sustainable mutual sharing of resources. Our current politic, neoliberalism, is based on the premise that we, as citizens, must compete. Without market and competition our economy breaks. This political ideology forces us citizens to view ourselves as individual units who must interact with others through a ‘healthy’ exchange of goods and services within a competitive market place. This in turn forces politics to become synonymous with matters of money and wealth, which means that all conversations about how we should live together revolves around discussions about how to generate income and how to spend that income.

Politics began as the varying practices of rulers and kings in their control of their subjects. When governance became more complex at the dawning of empires, these practices began to be studied by those powerful people who were delegated power by the emperor and advised him/her on decisions relating to maintaining control of the kingdom. Aristotle’s exploration on the subject, outlines 6 main tasks for a state to concern itself: food supply, manufacture of tools, weapons and defence, creation of wealth/trade, ‘and of primary importance the supervision of religious matters, which is called the priesthood’ and finally, ‘the most necessary of all, judgement about what is beneficial and what is just in their relations with one another.’

In Aristotle’s outlining of ‘good’ politic, wealth was a minor issue. Indeed Aristotle’s understanding of economics, which we all immediately think is about finance, was actually more to do with the general ‘art of household management’ (the original root of the word oikonomikos: economics) of which money is mentioned as a mere tool to be used within the art of managing a household.

It is clear that household management [economics] is not the same as wealth acquisition, since the former uses resources, while the latter provides them (Aristotle, CDC Reeve (trans.), Politics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998)p. 13)

Aristotle suggests that a symptom of a sick or distorted politic or economy is one which overly focuses on wealth acquisition. He even goes as far as to say,

Hence usury is very justifiably detested, since it gets wealth from money itself, rather than from the very thing money was devised to facilitate. For money was introduced to facilitate exchange, but interest makes money itself grow bigger. (That is how it gets its name; for offspring resemble their parents, and interest is money that comes from money.) Hence of all the kinds of wealth acquisition this one is the most unnatural.(ibid., p.19)

Of course, Aristotle is just one person who has outlined a political theory and there are many others who disagree with some or all of his ideas. Aristotle’s book however, along with Plato’s ‘Republic’, is considered the first systematic framework for political thought and one which, in my opinion, is so thorough that all books after it can be considered as footnotes or developments.

With this in mind, I find it interesting that the father of political philosophy should diagnose an economy based on interest rates and discussions on wealth acquisition as ‘most unnatural’. It is also of interest to note the biblical view of economics and, particularly discussions on money. The Old Testament has strong things to say about ‘usury’,

If he has a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things (though his father does none of them), who eats upon the mountains, defiles his neighbour’s wife, oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the idols, commits abomination, takes advance or accrued interest; shall he then live? He shall not. He has done all these abominable things; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:10-13) (my emphasis)

Jesus, repeatedly talks about money, not as something to ‘store up’, but something to be used to bless others. There is an interesting parable which seems to suggest that Jesus is stating that accruing interest is a godly thing,

As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’ When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.’ He said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.’ Then the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ He said to him, ‘And you, rule over five cities.’ Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.’ He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’” (Luke 19:11-27)

It is Walter Wink who famously challenges our traditional interpretation of this passage and, although I don’t follow his argument through to his conclusion exactly, I do agree with the questions he raises with the reading which is promoted in many Christian congregations. Wink’s argument begins by drawing out some verses which do not naturally ‘add up’. In the traditional interpretation of this passage the ‘nobleman’ is seen as the God-figure; if this is true then where is his ‘country’ of which the citizens ‘hated him’? Heaven or earth? If Heaven then the citizens are the angels and why are they described as hating God? If earth then where is the distant country of which also the citizens do not want him to rule over them?

This God-figure then becomes more sinister as we observe his interactions with the third slave: he is seen as a ‘harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow’ then he gives to those that have more and those that have nothing (the poor) even more will be taken away. How do we square this God with the God of the poor? His response to the failure of this slave to produce interest on an investment is not to send him away to a place with gnashing teeth (the usual punishment in parables) but to have him brought back and slaughtered in his presence!

If we understand Jesus as being the proclaimer of ‘good news to the poor’ then how might we read this parable through the eyes of the poor? The nobleman becomes Caesar, or worldly rulers, who want to seize power, who want to reap where they have not sown, to make money without working (usury). The poor in the nobleman’s country rightfully hate him and those who he goes a conquers do not want to be oppressed likewise. When he comes back the third slave, instead of being a symbol of failure, becomes instead a protestor to the misuse of money, economics and politics. Jesus sides, in this interpretation as being on the side of the third slave and his punishment will be like that of the slave in the story; to be slaughtered in the presence of his accusers.

Jesus tells this cautionary tale on his way into Jerusalem where he will defy those who have the power of life and death over him, standing before Herod, Pilate and others who ‘reap what they do not sow’.(Chris Howson, A Just Church: 21st century Liberation Theology in Action (London: Continuum, 2011) p.39)

This interpretation then fits within a theology which denies the use of usury and unhealthy reliance on investment, which brings money back into a position of tool rather than possession. The Kingdom is described by Jesus’ words and actions as having a different economy and politic to that offered by the empires of this world. God’s economy is securely based on a view that the world is full of abundant gift not scarcity.

There is the promise throughout Scripture that God has created an economy in which there is enough, that God has not created a world of scarcity with too many people or too little stuff. As Gandhi said, “There’s enough for everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed.” We are to pray this day for our daily bread – nothing more and nothing less. (Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: a liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Michigan: Zondervan, 2010) p.88)

Here, in the Rule of St. Benedict, we have the establishing of a practice which is based on a different economy to them one we are used to in the world. In this economy everyone is given enough; nothing more and nothing less. For the elderly, the young and the sick there is more given but the basic rule is that all will be fed. This economy relies on trust that God will provide our daily bread but also that we are to curb our desire for excess.

Reflection

The Kingdom of God has a distinct politic and economic system, one which challenges the world’s. It is easy to work within the Church (the embodiment of the Kingdom) using the theories and practices of the world when it comes to money and politics. We are called, however, to live God’s way in God’s economy but what a sign of God’s power and sovereignty if we lived in a world of abundance rather than scarcity.

Our reliance on interest, on savings and reserves is not only not ideal, it is actually contrary to the Kingdom of God. This view of money is one which is distorted by fear; fear of not having enough. Sure, there are congregations which struggle to make ends meet, with buildings requiring upkeep and heating to be maintained but the solution is not to seek more money but to ask what it is that God is giving you and to use that. What I mean is the focus of conversation is not looking at what’s missing but discerning what God has provided. This will require some challenging questions about the need for a large building, or on what the money is currently being spent on; maybe God wants you to redistribute the resources to other things and to stop us spending excessive amounts on particular projects.

The moment our conversations are solely about that which we don’t have the large the temptation to create it ‘unnaturally’. The problem of the austerity measures our current government (both the Coalition and parts of the Opposition) are promoting is not the practical outworkings but rather the basis altogether. It is far easier for us to change things to increase income than to ask the question of where are we being excessive? The disparity between the rich and the poor is solely rooted in the greed of our hearts and the system set up to encourage competition and private ownership.

We as the Church can preach the gospel by offering an alternative economy and politic and I for one want it to go beyond the Church; this, however, means we need to start living it in the Church.

Abundant God, you created the world teeming with life and called us to be stewards of its resources. You taught us the way to have enough for all and we’re truly sorry for the lack of care we have shown and our failure to fully grasp our shared responsibility over the world’s fruit. Grant us your wisdom to manage the many gifts you give us to build up the Body of Christ and to bring about your Kingdom in the world.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 38: the weekly reader

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No whispering or noise is to be heard, only the sound of the reader.

Why silence?

It is a sign of God’s grace and goodness that in a week which began with a blessed retreat with close confidantes as means of recovering from mental illness but before I can fully say I’m back to fitness, He grants that I have a relatively straight forward passage from the Rule of St. Benedict. Whilst on retreat I was able to apply my mind to theological study and reading and have made much needed headway on my writing project (which has been on the back burner for some months now!)

This week’s chapter outlines St. Benedict’s vision for meal times: silent and prayerful. This flies in the face of our culture’s understanding of meal times. It is a current trend within the life of the Church to have food and fellowship (they always go together!) In our church, the youth work is centred around a shared meal where we chat and find out about each other. I’d feel pretty insulted if someone judged what we did at these times of eating as ‘idle chatter’ because the work of relationship is multi layered and complex with use of various means of communication; ‘chatter’ being just one of them.

Having said that, there is a need in the specific example of our youth group and in the general point of meal times for more awareness of listening. Where, in our culture, do we encourage one another to be silent with others?

On my retreat with close friends we spent several times in silence. They were not long but they were rich. I treasured the times when we fell into silence together. Of course it wasn’t pure silence for we were all clearly communicating with God in prayer but it was a wonderful moment to have sat next to people where words did not need to be expressed.

Some of the most beautiful moments I have spent with my wife have been silent (this is not to say that I get bored of the sound of her voice or of what she has to say!) The time that comes to mind is last summer in her hospital room when she was lying staring into space and I sat looking at her. She was very ill and we’d run out of words to express frustration, anger at God, sadness of the situation and ultimately, a way to explain what the future held. Silence was the most appropriate sound and we sang it together beautifully.

As part of my recovery programme, I have embarked, with a counsellor, on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. I have looked at mindfulness before but in the context of contemplative prayer exercises. For me, mindfulness is a form of contemplation; contemplation on the present moment and where it is being punctuated by God’s grace and mercy. I’m reminded of Thomas Merton’s description of contemplative prayer,

Contemplative prayer is, in a way, simply the preference for the desert, for emptiness, for poverty… Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005)p. 111-112)

One of the exercises for this week is to be intentionally conscious of the process of eating; to eat a meal and be aware of the texture of the food, the sensation of the need to swallow and the echoes of taste on the tongue. It is in this exercise that I am aware of the power and need for silence at meal times.

We must be careful, however, to remove the Rule of St. Benedict from its context. If we are to truly reflect on how the Rule may be utilised in a current, un-cloistered culture then we must ask some important questions. For this particular part of the Rule it would foolish to blindly take the guidance without asking whether there is any worthy benefit of encouraging conversation at meal times.

To go back to the specific example of our youth group: it may be an interesting experiment to try one meal time in silence but the reason we gather round the table is to engage in relationship. We remove all mobile devices and encourage them to connect with others over the very tangible and present reality of food. We have established, after much reflection, prayer and consultation that it is important for our young people (some more than others) to have a place, each week, to sit and have a family meal where they are encouraged to listen and to be heard with no distractions and no where to rush off to. ‘Idle chatter’ at the table is counter cultural for some of them where silence fills their meal times but a silence poor in listening due to the distraction of technology and relationships being fostered remotely.

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The Reader

A brief note on the requirement of quality in public reading:

Coming from an arts background I have often been asked by colleagues and church readers for practical advice and training in how to read effectively. We’ve all been in services or groups where someone goes to read (Scripture particularly) and puts on this strange voice which makes the reading sound as dull as dishwater! They have no passion for what they are reading and/or they have no sense of what the words are saying. The opposite is often just as bad; someone, wanting to make it sound interesting, puts such emphasis on the reading that it becomes comic and (to use a theatrical term) ‘hammy’.

There is a comfortable middle way which is achieved by knowing what it is you’re reading; knowing the specific words and what they mean, knowing the context it was written and the context into which you are reading, to know the genre and general point of the piece. This takes preparation and then certain skills and experience to translate all that knowledge into your voice to communicate beyond words the meaning of the words.

With these skills, developed through experience and training, words are open to having life breathed into them and are then able to change people’s lives. It is these trained or experienced people, who have gone thorough a process of reflecting on their practice, who should be encouraged to stand up in public and read for it is in their ‘ministry’ that people will be invited to hear and respond to what is being read for the building up of their souls.

Reflection

Part of my theological study whilst on retreat was to bring together my years of thinking around the need for a new form ecclesiology for the Church of England; one that would encourage and grow discipleship amongst our people. Part of the solution, I believe, can be found in the discoveries of the New Monastic movement. It was Alan Roxburgh who wrote,

Discipleship emerges out of prayer, study, dialogue and worship by a community learning to ask the questions of obedience, as they are engaged directly in mission. (Alan Roxburgh, Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1997) p.66)

I love that vision for the church: to be a place of ‘prayer, study, dialogue and worship’. Often the church, I find, devalues study; individuals palm their responsibility off to academics and the local congregation is starved of intellectual rigour as it gets trapped in the academy. I’m reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations of the monastic movement before the Reformation,

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard – a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995) p.47)

Although Bonhoeffer is discussing the complete task of discipleship I see a distinct lack of study within modern congregations. Not only do they resist participating in it but they belittle its worth to justify their lack of desire for it. There is a common thought that you don’t need to study to grow in discipleship, there is no need to wrestle with difficult questions or, if you do need to, it is to be done by understanding how you feel rather than learning how to think. This develops into teaching which is authorised solely by emotional feeling rather than intellectual truths.

There needs to be a place where a community learns to sit in silence and listen to teaching and to listen with their hearts as well as their ears; to receive teaching and the wisdom of the Church, to be challenged to grow and to be inspired to study the words and works of God. This study needs to be shaped and directed so that we do not fall into heresy and worldly wisdom.

Yes, there is a place for discussion and dialogue but where are the times of silent study, together, as a community?

Teacher, you taught us that there is no other teacher but you and so we commit to sitting at your feet and receiving bread from heaven, every word that comes from your mouth. We want to learn how to be expectant to hear from you, to answer your invitation to enter the desert, to be emptied, to become poor in order to meet with you, to be filled by your Spirit and to be rich in knowledge and love of you.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 37: Old men and children

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Human nature tends to show sympathy to the aged and to children. The Rule also should make provision for them.

What is sympathy?

It would be too easy to skip past the opening of this chapter blindly accepting the statement that,

Human nature tends to show sympathy to the aged and to children.

without questioning whether we, as a society at the present moment, do show sympathy for aged and children. When pondering this question I find myself asking,

What is sympathy?

As I continue to pray for my own personal recovery from mild, stress related depression and after my public admission to suffering from this; I have received many expressions of concern and some sympathy from others. This has been nice, to some extent, but it has also not helped. The responses to my illness have fallen broadly into three categories: the first is what I might call ‘distanced concern’ and the second is ‘accepted reality’.

By ‘distanced concern’ I mean people who don’t know what it is like to feel and think like I do expressing concern that I am damaging myself and my behaviour is unknown and scary to them. This is not their fault; I don’t expect everyone to understand what I am going through and their concern is, I hope, truly genuine. It is nice to know that people want me to function and flourish; the fact they don’t know how to make that happen doesn’t belittle their desire to help. Their desire, however, stops at the point of action because they can’t help me. This is not their fault and I am not accusing them of some failure because there is none. Saying that one can get tired of expressions of concern when what you want is someone to help you. When you’re stuck down a hole there’s only so many times you can have people walking past wishing me luck in getting out,

Wow, that must be tough. I really wish I could help you up but I’m not sure how. Let me know how that works out.

The second category of responses, I want to name ‘accepted reality’. This is what I understand as sympathy; from the Greek syn (beside, to accompany) and pathos (feelings, passions). In both the Latin and the Greek, the words we use to get ‘sympathy’ have this sense of accompanying in another’s feelings. I have experienced this being manifested in worthy statements such as:

I know how that feels.

I have been through something similar to that and I know how the pressures impact me.

I too feel similar feelings to you. You’re not alone.

These are very well meaning and can help to know that you’re not alone in a situation. Again, however, there’s only so much sympathy I can take before I get tired of people sitting at the top of the hole I’m in telling me,

I’ve been down a hole before. It was a real struggle for me to get myself out. I can’t really help you except to sit and wait for the answer to become clear.

There is I feel a deeper part to sympathy which I’d like to separate from the mere accompanying aspect and I’d name that ‘empathy’. Empathy has a more intense dimension to it which is important. The difference in the root of this word is that instead of the syn (beside) it begins with en (in). There is a helpful video which distinguishes between ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’.

If sympathy is a ‘coming alongside someone in their emotions and feelings’, then empathy, for me is about entering into the pain of the other. To continue this analogy of the hole: if some walk past offering good will and others sit at the top of the hole to keep a suffering one company, then empathy is when someone jumps into the hole and sits in it with them. I feel guilty, however, when there is a sense of empathy shown towards me because I perceive it as them having to take the same feelings as I have in an attempt to help me but the solution to the problem is not found, we just end up sitting together bemoaning the fact we feel this with no way out.

The third response, which has been rare in my case and I continue to pray for, is what I want to call ‘transformative compassion’.

When I read the gospels and particularly the stories of when Jesus ‘had compassion’ (Mt 9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34; Mk 1:41, 6:34, 8:2, 9:22-23; Lk 7:13) I’m always struck by the way in which this leads him to action, to change the situation whether that’s raising someone from the dead, feeding the hungry or healing the sick. Jesus never seems to just sympathise or empathise with suffering but his response is to act in eradicating it.

For me this ‘transformative compassion’ is something altogether different from our usual responses to other’s sufferings. The two previous responses have been different by the proximity we have with the pain; the first is at arms length, one might say objectifying and observing, the second has two stages, one close enough to hear the cries and to pay close attention but remaining separate from the pain, the next stage is to enter the life and to allow the pain to change your life. This third response continues that trajectory through the pain to the other side and it is, I would want to suggest, a purely God activity. To say it is a God activity does not, I think, excuse us from engaging in it; we are to be instruments through which God works this compassion.

I cannot pass this opportunity to remind us of the fabulous Greek word for compassion: splagchnizomai. Trying to say it gives a sense of the sense behind it. It literally means to be moved in your gut, like being punched firmly in the stomach. It means to wake you up to the severity of another’s experience and to have no other option but to stop it.

Being the kind of person I am, I cannot allow injustices to continue unchanged. My tendency is to isolate the root cause of problems and to work towards bettering the system which perpetuates them. This task is never as easy as people suggest (and most of the time it is to destroy the system altogether which is neither helpful nor Godly… I could say more but I won’t.) It is from this outlook and with the little energy I currently have that I become impatient with ‘pastoral sympathy/empathy’. It is not effective to just sit and wait for someone else to do something. I have little time to sit and tell someone that it’s ok to feel pain while someone repeatedly punches them in the face, without actually turning and stopping the other person from punching them in the face.

George Orwell, in his book ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, articulates this well in a scene where he describes a group of ‘tramps’ being fed by a church in London with a worship service afterwards. The ‘tramps’ behave ‘in the most outrageous way’. At the end of the chapter Orwell reflects,

The scene had interested me. It was so different from the demeanour of tramps – from the abject worm-like gratitude with which they normally accept charity. The explanation, of course, was that we out-numbered the congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor – it is a fixed characteristic of human nature. (George Orwell, ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ (London: Penguin Books, 2001)p.197)

He goes on to outline the need for practical action to change the circumstances and the cultural responses to the poor (which I’m afraid continues to this day!)

I say all this because St. Benedict’s use of the word ‘sympathy’, I think, moves into ‘transformative compassion’ by changing the situation for those who struggle. He does it with the sick and the wayward monks and now he does it for the elderly and the children. This is a practical response to the various needs to those who struggle with certain aspects of his Rule which does not pander or release them from obedience but encourages them to participate and move towards holiness.

Reflection

Our society has sympathy for the elderly but it is, I would suggest, a passive sadness about their welfare. Individuals are left to care for our children, sick and elderly. Loneliness is a problem, but a problem which is insurmountable and so no one engages in systematic change. The church could be a radical force for change in the way we treat the vulnerable, the sick and the elderly. Here in York there is a move for the Church, via the One Voice York network, to provide twenty or more families to foster children along with the ‘Home For Good‘ initiative. One Voice York also is looking at establishing a practical network of visiting the isolated and elderly, providing them with company and practical help. These two initiatives, for me, go some way at transferring the sympathy of most to the ‘transformative compassion’ of Christ.

Many will say that parishes already fulfil this task of visiting the elderly but it often relies on the clergy and/or a few lay people. The inclusion of the elderly and the young is the task for the whole church. It is the whole church who should, as St. Benedict outlines, not think of this care as an extra part of the life of the Church but to be woven into our approach to community life in general. This might mean having small groups adopting children and/or elderly and discovering ways in which the tasks of the community can be adapted to suit them without changing the general Rule of everyone else.

This approach requires a change in ecclesiology and eschatology of the Church which currently sees everyone as part of the Church and that you go to worship to remind you of the peace that awaits us when we die. The Church has sanctified the status quo wholesale without a need to change it. The church sympathises with the struggle and waits for the pain to stop when we die or when Christ comes again (if they think he really will!) Instead, what I am proposing is that the church is made up of those who live out the reality of the Kingdom of God which is being born amongst us and that we are ‘co-labouring’ to establish. As disciples of Christ we actively seek and work out, with fear and trembling, our healing to be transformed more and more into the like-ness of Christ, image of God. Whilst we change we are placed within the Body of Christ as part of the community of others who are likewise being changed for encouragement and support. As we seek God’s will for us our eyes are lifted to others and we learn, through the Body of Christ and later outside to the world, to love others and to seek how they can live in the joy and hope of the Kingdom which God wants to establish here on earth. This will involve, therefore, the elderly and the children as well as everyone else. The Kingdom of God will manifest itself differently with different people and we encourage it however we find it.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that you are not satisfied with the way the world is and that you are moving to change it. I thank you for the gift of your transformative Spirit and I ask that you would come in power to change me, the world and all that populate it. May your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus.