Tag Archives: humility

Chapter 45: mistakes in the oratory

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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.

Or

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

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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.

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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 37: Old men and children

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

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.

Chapter 36: sick brothers

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

Before others and above all, special care must be taken of the ill so they may be looked after, as Christ.

What is an infirmarian to do with my sickness?

It was ironic that, on the week I was reflecting on how a community cares for the sick, I got sick. My sickness was not a commonly accepted sickness and many people question whether we should classify what I am still suffering with as a ‘sickness’ but for me there were physical symptoms which hindered me from functioning as well as I can and therefore it is a sickness like any other. My sickness was stress related and was a mental sickness: depression.

I am prone to this sickness like some are to colds and flus, to migraines and back problems. I am aware that I can be ‘crippled’ by this sickness if not kept in check. The symptoms for me (as I am aware people suffer with this in different ways) are an overwhelming sense of apathy, weariness, chest pains, inability to sleep, stomach cramps and unexpected waves of sadness and weeping. I am often loathed to name this sickness ‘depression’ because of the various versions of it and reasons for it: some are biological and hormonal others are circumstantial and based on the interaction between personality and environment/culture. Mine is not majorly biological but rather the way I function doesn’t, pre heavenly state of being, lend itself to easily coping with certain situations. Trying to manage these symptoms and counter them is difficult and is made more difficult when trying to function normally.

I am not one for hiding problems but this illness has a stigma particularly if you are a leader and teacher. This illness is deemed as a weakness and a failure in greater and lesser degrees. People judge you as the cause of the sickness and when you fail to function like normal you are blamed for not being able to control yourself and your body. Outside of the sickness I can see how this response comes about and there is a certain regime one should develop to live with mental health sickness. When you are overwhelmed by the darkness and despair it is so easy to fall into blaming yourself for your relapse but that makes things worse.

The problem I have found with this current bout of sickness is how it is, for me, externally triggered but that doesn’t mean that the trigger is the sole blame for it. It is the mixture with many other factors including my personal state of mind and, yes, body. If I am tired (like everyone gets sometimes) then I’m more vulnerable. Here again the sickness is like the common cold for me: if I am low on energy to fight the virus then I will knocked by it so, in order to not catch colds, I need to keep my energy up. Also, like the common cold, there is an external trigger, someone gives you a cold, but the solution to that is to not be around anyone. This is stupid and unrealistic so there’s always a danger of contracting it but I need to look after myself.

Despite it being a sickness there is not a simple cure for it (aside from medication which I have issues with, personally). Each person and each triggered relapse requires different ‘cures’ or strategies. I find preventative measures much more helpful than reactionary diagnosis and aid. I’d rather find better ways to protect myself from falling ill rather than to keep falling ill and having to wait for things to ease. It is easier, in my mind, to learn how to manage the external triggers rather than to be blind to them and be surprised every time to begin to suffer.

The complication for me comes when my ministry requires me to live so close to so many potential triggers. My personality/spirituality/theology are based largely on being vulnerable, committing to deep relationship with others and to engaging in a very real battle between darkness and light. This means that I find myself placed in situations which I am called to stand with people in brokenness, burden and the darknesses of this world. For someone who is easily tempted to despair this is not a great place to be for long periods of time but I do not feel it is God’s will for me to avoid such situations; in fact, I am witness to the powerful way in which God is redeeming this approach to life and discipleship in powerful ways for people. I’m not just talking about a basic understanding for people in a situation but actually of taking off the other their burden and sharing the weight, feeling the pain of loss and the void of hopelessness. I do that with the full knowledge and faith in Christ the Light of the world.

Being in these situations I know my own complete dependance on God to sustain me and to uphold me. I genuinely cry out for both myself and the person who’s burden I am sharing. I know that, if I don’t turn to God, I will fall and I will suffer. This does mean, however, that when I suffer with despair it is so easy for me to think,

I clearly was not with God nor dependant on him.

This makes me feel as though I have failed and beat myself further into a miry pit.

Having people around me concerned for my wellbeing is nice, to a point, but how am I to be taken care of? What is an infirmarian to do with my sickness?

This is a question I am still wrestling with and it is made more acute when I look at the Church of England and the structures in place for its leaders (lay and ordained). What support and healing is available and realistic? Who is the Diocesan Infirmarian and how might healing work within the pressures of full-time ministry?

Without dismissing anyone who is ‘weak’ enough to suffer from this inability to cope with the pressures of ministry and who can’t divorce their own lives from others to protect themselves from deep, gut-wrenching compassion what is the Church of England to do? Is there a way that people like me can be surrounded and supported, like Moses was with Hur and Aaron (Exodus 17), to be used by God in this ministry of vulnerability and compassion?

Most ministers I know either suffer in silence or develop divorcing techniques from the cause of the problem. Neither really changes the situation; both are avoiding the deeper issues. If you just ‘cope’ and accept reality as unchangeable (or at best ‘long term and complicated’) then you lose any hope of your situation changing; you’re trapped and must change to deal with it or succumb to a kind of death. If you develop divorcing techniques such as, refusing to enter fully into the emotion of conflict and/or other’s painful experience, distraction from reflecting too much on complex landscape of the mess of the world or just repeating over and over, ‘it’s all fine really’ then you ignore the problem and it is only a matter of time before you can ignore it no more.

So what are my conclusions? What are the answers to my questions? I’m afraid I don’t know entirely but here is my best stab in the dark (and it really feels dark at times)…

The isolation model of most parish ministers is unhealthy for the kind of work that we are called to engage with. I would be surprised if many parish priests would not admit to feeling lonely at some point. Fortunately many full-time ministers (lay and ordain) gather round them teams of people but, because of the responsibility and the oversight role they hold it is difficult to be open and honest at certain times. There might be more fruit in sharing the full responsibility and pressures of leadership in peer groups, with the overall care of the team of peers being placed with the abbot (bishop) and deans together.

When one of the ministers falls sick then the others come around and fulfil the work. An infirmarian is called in and the sick minister is taken to a place to heal knowing that the work continues in the way that it was started.

Unfortunately, due to the centralisation of power that tends to be executed in the Church of England the powers to act and support are so far removed from the parish that it can feel like you are neglected. It takes so long to get hold of the busy bishop or arch-deacon.

I am aware that in some cases this works well but the system is a strained model which needs looking at.

Reflection

As I still struggle with my illness, without an effective infirmarian or ‘cure’, I am acutely aware of how my approach to ministry and how God has shaped and continues to use me doesn’t work within the Church of England generally. I am aware that my theology and particular call is not the liberal, at times cynical and altogether ‘pragmatic’ approach of the majority of the Church of England and that what I desire is an intentional community of discipleship who share life together: prayer together, study together and mission together. To put it simply I am monastic and the Church of England is not.

There is something, I feel, to be had if we were to ask the question of the larger system and institution of the Church of England. That question is this:

What if every parish church was either a) a monastery with the powers devolved to enable it to function or b)the parish is seen as one equal but distinct part of a wider monastic community of a deanery in prayer, study and mission together?

As I struggle to see a way out of the forest of my current plethora of external triggers to my sickness, I am forced to reflect on the role of a curacy. This is a much bigger topic than can be dealt with here but I want to voice a hunch that if we see the role of college training as a powerhouse of discipleship and preparation why is there a big disconnect between it and parish training? Is there any scope in developing a training programme which continues on that process of a placing curates (and maybe all full time ministers) into a community that live together, praying, studying and engaging in mission? As we welcome new people in other employment we develop and grow that community which is fed from the local centre of monastic rhythm.

Lots of thoughts on that: anyone willing to talk to me and dream with me on that?

Loving Father, you know my prayers, the silent sighs and groans tune in with your Spirit who intercedes for us, “Abba Father”. That is a prayer not just as a cry from a nightmare to be embraced and brought close to you but also as a statement of refuge and strength.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 35: weekly kitchen service

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

The brothers should wait on one another.

What’s so wrong about actions?

For the last few weeks I’ve been engaging in my reformation tradition by reading some Martin Luther and studying Lutheran Theology. It’s always important to be aware of the traditions that shape you either consciously or unconsciously and to own those thoughts or philosophies for yourself. As I’ve read Luther and touched on other Reformation Theology I’ve re-engaged with the debate over ‘justification through faith or works’. This chapter in the Rule of St. Benedict, written by a Roman Catholic monk has something to say into this debate, particularly to those of us who are suspicious about ‘works’.

I find that we protestants get overly cautious around discussions about living out our faith as in anyway necessary, as though we may slip into talk about justification through works. As a Roman Catholic convert I don’t have this hang up. I find that the Bible is clear that if we do not show, in our actions, our faith then our faith is demeaned or lessened.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. (James 2:14-18)

I am aware that ‘justification by works’ is a particular thought that divorces our heart from our actions. Some people think that it doesn’t really matter what they believe as long as they do set rituals or actions and that makes them right before God; that the actions of a human make them righteous before God and not the actions of God Himself. The passage in James and what St. Benedict is proposing throughout his Rule says something very different: we need both faith to inform our actions and our actions to reveal our faith.

To err on the other side is to say, “I believe in Jesus and know that he died and rose again and has forgiven my sins” but then to not allow that impact one’s actions. This means that actions have no role to play in your relationship with God. This attitude has led to many ‘Christians’ acting in very odd and non-loving ways. Jesus had something very particular to say to them in the telling of the parable of the sheep and the goats.

We can talk all we like about ‘love’ and ‘hope’ as ideas but what does it mean to live these out? What actions best communicate such conceptual ideas? Our faith is established on the principle of Christ who said,

The greatest among you will be your servant. (Matthew 23:11)

The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27)

We live out love, hope, faith in actions and particularly in service of others. If we do not serve others then we are not following Christ for he said,

Servants are not greater than their master. (John 13:16)

Being a servant in a Christian community is not about being open to abuse but is a mutual understanding that service is itself the position of power. Service, for Christians, should be the expression of the right use power. We should be trying, in Christian communities, to out-serve one another and rejoicing in the service of others as they act out the character of Christ the Servant King.

In this chapter St. Benedict repaints the picture of Jesus washing his disciples feet. This event must be seen as a modelling of correct behaviour and action within the Christian community. The washing of the feet is, in my eyes, just as important as the Last Supper that follows. To ‘do this in remembrance’ must also be connected with foot washing as it does to the Eucharist. Part of this scene in John’s gospel is Jesus’ exchange with Peter who refuses Christ’s service to him. Jesus rebukes Peter and says that he must allow Jesus to serve him or it’s tantamount to saying he doesn’t want to be in relationship with Jesus. We must never refuse the service of others, freely given and, therefore, freely received. Our actions are, despite what we would like to believe, reciprocal as we enter into the Kingdom of the free exchange of gift from one to another, no one being able to keep a record but trusting that all should give and all receive in abundance.

We must be careful, however, that we do not just perform the servant task but that the action flows out from the correct heart and understanding, by faith, of who Christ is. Our discipleship should lead us to serve others in love not as a duty but as natural response of thankfulness for Christ and who he is and what he did. We should, as well, be encouraging people to grow in their faith so that they can learn how to express that through loving service but we must also direct others and ourselves to ensure that all service is done from a place of faith.

That is why prayer is placed again at the heart of this, clearly sacramental, part of the life of the monastery. Before you begin the task you pray, three times, in front of others,

O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. (Psalm 70:1)

It is why at the end of your time of service you pray, again, three times, in front of others,

Blessed are You, O Lord God, who did help me and console me. (Psalm 86:17)

These prayers should place God at the forefront of our minds as we do them. We ask that we would meet Christ in those that we serve and to know Christ knelt with us as we serve. We seek to recognise that we serve because Christ serves and we follow him.

Reflection

The life of discipleship is a total experience. What I mean is that it should impact every aspect of your being; physical as well as emotional and spiritual. We cannot divorce our humanity from our spirituality. If we say in our hearts, “Jesus is Lord” but do not clothe the naked, feed the hungry, look after the poor then we lie to ourselves and others. On the other hand,

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Parish ministry continues to show me the many different ways we all struggle to walk the narrow path of Christ. We all fall short and all have our own blindness in our discipleship that is why we need to commit to one another in obedience and faithfulness to practising the art of becoming Christ-like, in heart and action.

Do we require too little of those who see themselves as part of the Church? I don’t mean in terms of time of service but rather requiring a Christ-like discipleship to root all ministry. I see too many churches happily encouraging voluntarily action of their church-goers but where do we require a mature faith to be at the heart of a desire to serve? Church-goers can continue to be physically part of a community and become active members of congregations without their faith being deepened or even properly started. We busy the people who turn up to our churches to get them involved but we rarely ask whether their hearts are in the right place. This then leads to PCC’s and committees being populated with people who have little faith or experience in the transformative power of Christ and the decisions of the Church become worldly rather than that of the Kingdom of God. There are people who do not have a relationship with God that informs all their choices. They look to worldy wisdom before Godly wisdom.

Loving Father of us all, thank you for coming in the form of a servant and leading us to right thinking and right action. Thank you for the model of Jesus who became in very nature a slave and humbled himself even to the point of death. Teach and lead us all to follow in his footsteps the way of the cross, narrow as it is.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 33: private ownership by monks

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

The vice of private ownership must be uprooted from the monastery.

What do I do with all my stuff?

If you read this chapter to anyone outside the Christian church (and many within it too) they’d be deeply concerned about the welfare of the monks in a monastery and would think that they were being brainwashed. I’d go so far as to say that if someone lived out this uprooting then people would intervene and think that the institution was some sort of cult. Most people want to take the benefits of monastic spirituality but few want to pay the price. I am guilty of this feeling as much as any.

This week Archbishop Justin Welby publicly invited anyone between the ages of 20-35 to join a monastic community in Lambeth Palace. This is about committing one year of your life to living in prayer and community. I was immediately grabbed by the idea. As you will know if you read my review of Parish Monasticism that my wife and I feel increasingly called to monastic life in some form. As I have prayed about this opportunity for Sarah and I to go to Lambeth for a year I have been struck by concerns that seem to be pushing themselves to the front of my mind; reasons why it might not be the right thing to do.

One of them is,

What would we do with all our stuff?

Despite all my talk about the benefits of monasticism for the promotion of discipleship amongst Christians I have never had to live out that call of poverty. I have always justified my possessions of things as being needing them for God’s glory but I’ve never been tested on that because I live in a culture that don’t expect me to get rid of things I like (in fact it’s a culture that demands that I don’t!) If Sarah and I had to downsize to one room which already had a bed and wardrobe, etc. What would we do with all our furniture that we’ve paid money for? Surely God doesn’t want us to give them away! What would I do with all my kitchen stuff? After our year Sarah and I would need to start all over again, collecting things to cook and eat with. We need them!

What about my books?!!!!!!!!

I know when God is challenging me, I don’t like it but I know when he’s doing it! In my prayer time I feel that if God is calling us to this year in Anselm’s Community then God is wanting me to look at my ‘need’ for my stuff.

My mum has saying,

It’s only stuff!

I really admire how God has worked in her life to get her to a place where that rings true but he hasn’t walked that with me yet. I don’t look forward to the day when he does it but I pray that he will give me no option!

I can hear the voices of friends and some of you, my dear readers, as we try to soften the call to get rid of all I own and give to the poor; I’ve heard it thousands of times and I’ve said it myself to others,

It’s more about your attitude to stuff rather than the stuff itself.

The problem with this statement is not that it’s not true but that it is rarely tested. We hear that get out and we persuade ourselves that we have a healthy attitude towards our stuff and that that means we get to keep them. I can’t seem to shake that Jesus meant what he said.

If someone came and asked me to give them all my books I would probable, if I’m honest, tell them nicely that I couldn’t do it but they’re more than welcome to use them. When I think about living in community I imagine my books becoming common property, available to anyone who lives in the house/monastery but I would still have a share in them. St. Benedict is calling the monks to not even have a share in property.

There is a reason why this is so difficult for our culture; it cuts to the very heart of our sickness. Individual will being exalted above communal need and consumerism being the foundation of our self-identity. We all have our stories we tell ourselves as to how we are not impacted by them but we are sick and we need help. I feel monasticism is part of the cure for our world and it is increasingly urgent to enact before we lose the power of the gospel out of fear of being ‘not relevant’ or ‘cultural acceptable’.

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

The wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I’m not always a fan of just quoting long lengths of internet sites (particularly not Wikipedia) but I’ve been re-reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship which is, like all his writings, hard hitting and deeply encouraging. As I can’t just quote the whole book I do think this summary is excellent. Here it is in its entirety:

One of the most quoted parts of the book deals with the distinction which Bonhoeffer makes between “cheap” and “costly” grace. But what is “cheap” grace? In Bonhoeffer’s words:

“cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”

Or, even more clearly, it is to hear the gospel preached as follows: “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. In contrast to this is costly grace:

“costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.””

Bonhoeffer argues that as Christianity spread, the Church became more “secularised”, accommodating the demands of obedience to Jesus to the requirements of society. In this way,

“the world was Christianised, and grace became its common property.”

But the hazard of this was that the gospel was cheapened, and obedience to the living Christ was gradually lost beneath formula and ritual, so that in the end, grace could literally be sold for monetary gain.

But all the time, within the church, there had been a living protest against this process: the monastic movement. This served as a “place where the older vision was kept alive.” Unfortunately, “monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate”; the commandments of Jesus were limited to “a restricted group of specialists” and a double standard arose: “a maximum and a minimum standard of church obedience.” Why was this dangerous? Bonhoeffer points out that whenever the church was accused of being too worldly, it could always point to monasticism as “the opportunity of a higher standard within the fold – and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard for others.” So the monastic movement, instead of serving as a pointer for all Christians, became a justification for the status quo.

Bonhoeffer remarks how this was rectified by Luther at the Reformation, when he brought Christianity “out of the cloister”. However, he thinks that subsequent generations have again cheapened the preaching of the forgiveness of sins, and this has seriously weakened the church:

“The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organised church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptised, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving… But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.”

Reflection

There’s not much more I can add to that. Re-read those words at the end,

The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organised church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptised, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving… But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.

Many will say that he was speaking specifically to Nazi Germany but I say we too quickly soften nd justify that which is painful to hear.

I know what I need to pray through and start working on in my discipleship and it is this challenging call to start giving away my stuff to prove to myself alone that I have the right attitude to stuff… I might have to build up to giving away books!

Lord Jesus Christ, your call on our lives is complete and unwavering. You demand obedience because a softened version of discipleship doesn’t change the world. Grant to us the strength and help you promised in your Holy Spirit and lead us always in your path.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 31: the cellarer

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

He will take care of everything, but will do all under the abbot’s orders.

How then shall we live?

I have been a public critic of the isolated, CEO-styled leadership within the church for many years. Even when a leader ‘builds a team’ around them it can remain under their power and responsibility; no decision of any importance is made without them knowing of it. It seems sensible enough: if the buck ends with you, you’d want to be aware of the risks. A church can be a large ship and, therefore, needs decisive and visionary captains to steer it through decisions and strategies. This cannot be done through committee as disagreement costs time and and can divert the ship off course to their ultimate goal. With this understanding of ministry the pyramid structure of leadership is the most efficient and effective.

What if that wasn’t the aim of Christian ministry? What if the church wasn’t meant to have a five year plan because it had an eternal plan? What if the plan was not to have a militaristic styled strategy of ‘take-over’ the world because the plan was to simply live as if this world was of no threat in the light of the resurrection? What if the church was meant to be a gathering of people who were committed to living more like Jesus together and establishing a Kingdom which played by completely different rules to that of the world in which they find themselves?

In this sort of community there is no need for a head because the direction is not one person’s possession which he/she allows others to be a part of but the direction is set by a Spirit which is discerned collectively and owned collectively. In this model the community is like a family. What kind of family sits down and discusses their five year plan? Would they choose, at a family gathering, which of them is going to ‘lead’ the family? Is a father more important than a mother, one sibling more important than another? The one who cooks, are they deemed more responsible than the one who washes up?

In the Rule of St. Benedict, the role of the abbot is clearly a ‘leader’. I’ve read many articles, theses and books that use the role of the abbot in a monastery as a model for spiritual leadership and I’d agree with most of them but what is interesting is the role of cellarer; are they a leader or not? if a leader then a lesser one than abbot? The cellarer is under the authority of the abbot, for sure; it clearly says that but what kind of authority does the abbot wield over the cellarer? A humble oversight of the spiritual health of each and every monk. The role of the abbot is to ensure that, on the Day of Judgement, the monks can stand before God pure and holy in his sight. The spiritual health of the monks will be the measure of the abbot’s faithfulness to Christ. It is a heavy responsibility. The abbot is a teacher of the faith,

he should show them by deeds, more than by words, what is good and holy.

The abbot is an overseer and is entrusted with the task of ensuring the ethos and character of the community is that of Christ. He is not to be the decider of action; that is left to others. Although there is a complex relationship between character and action there is a distinction between the two. Whether our actions drive our character or the other way round it is clear that character is ‘being’ and action is ‘doing’.

I saw this this week and it made me smile!

In this understanding the abbot is the overseer of the community’s ‘being’ but it is the role of someone else to oversee the community’s ‘doing’. In St. Benedict’s understanding the ‘doing’/action must come from the ‘being’/character but it is not his role to decide what that ‘doing’/action is. The abbot establishes a partnership with others. This partnership is entered into by humble servants who are focussed on the weight of their respective roles. They must not be mistaken that their role is the highest but rather the lowest being always aware of the fallen nature of humanity and the insurmountable, unending task that lays before them; how to be the Body of Christ in the world.

The monastic call has always developed in times and places when the church is asking one question,

How then shall we live?

In the dust clouds of the falling worldly empires and structure, godly men and women have fled to the edge lands and asked this question. This question has led these gathered survivors first to silent mourning,confession, repentance and prayer; in this they strip themselves of the ways in which they were caught up in the dying empire and dismantle the inner constructions of the empires within themselves. After this confession and repentance they begin, slowly, to live out the basics of faith; to live simply, not to complicate things or move quickly. At each step they ask this one question. How do they discern what is right and wrong? by asking ‘Does it look like Jesus?’

Looking like Jesus is a character issue – pure and simple.

In order to answer, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’you must first ask ‘What Is Jesus Like?’; it is easier to decide what to do if you know what it is you want to be.

How easy it is to say,

Just be like Jesus.

But we all have a different understanding of who Jesus is… This is where the community becomes the most important factor: The Spirit of God points to Jesus and leads the people of God to know Christ and Christ crucified. It is the Spirit that tells us “Jesus Christ is Lord”. The Spirit moves in the Body of Christ not in one part of it. The Spirit is the life blood of the Body and flows to each part giving vitality and movement/action.

Wisdom and discernment takes time for us fallen humans but we are nowhere without it. We are like all other empires and worldly groups doing lots and being nothing. St. Paul has this advice to a Christian community,

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

“Do nothing,” says Paul, “from a place of ‘electioneering’ or when you are focussed on your office, nor empty pride, but, from a place of knowing of what you are made and to what you can quickly return to, lead others to be superior to yourself.” It is interesting that what is translated here in NRSV as ‘regard’ is the greek word ‘hegeomai’ which means ‘to lead’. Don’t move until you have the character and the Spirit directs you.

In the theatre an actor is given a character, then they are given a space in which to perform and to play, then they move and are shaped by the director. It’s a beautifully creative and surprising activity of playing and moulding. The same is true of the spiritual work of faith; we need to get to know the character, through reading the script. Then we attempt small movements and vocal trials all the while looking to the director for guidance and encouragement. In an ensemble model of theatre practice the director is not the dictator but a fellow artist; their role is to observe and ask questions. In the spiritual work the director is the Holy Spirit who prompts, challenges and encourages us to become more and more truthful portrayers of the character of Christ.

Reflection

Parish ministry is set up so the minister is the management and the spiritual director although they are different tasks and roles. As the leader with sole responsibility you are called upon to not only have oversight of the spiritual wellbeing of your community, vast and varied as that is, but also to make decisions as to what sermon series to do, organising events, setting up for services, making sure the rotas get done, managing PCCs with all the bureaucracy and business.

Imagine what could be achieved if the day to day running of a parish was established as a different role to the role of spiritual guide? I wonder what that might look like. Imagine if that was the expectation.

What I mean is, what if ‘leadership’ roles was more like St. Paul’s use of it in Philippians 2 as the raising up others and not drawing attention to the office. That discipleship was the desired office to have and the model of ministry was structured round the development of discipleship.

Heavenly Father, you call us all into your kingdom to be transformed into the character of Christ. help us by your Spirit to be formed daily into his likeness. May our actions reveal his character and may his character inform our actions that all of our being will reveal him to the world, for your glory!

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 28: those who do not change their ways despite much correction

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

…if all this is to no avail, the abbot must wield the surgeon’s knife.

How do we reconcile?

It has not been easy to travel the last six weeks with the reflections on discipline, conflict and division. To have your prayer life shaped by the reading and meditating on such concerns, even hypothetically, causes a great burden to fall. I can’t wait until my prayers are shaped by utensils and hospitality but for now we must continue.

This week it is the heaviest of all the chapters on punishment. I will re-iterate a correction of the common understanding of excommunication for those of my readers who may have forgotten. Excommunication is not the total dismissing of a person from a community (well at least not in monastic life). Excommunication is aimed at being temporary and in this state the abbot still has contact and authority over the ‘wayward brother’; there is still hope of healing and a full re-instating. What is being discussed in this chapter, however, is the ‘surgeon’s knife’ (in another translation it is read as ‘amputation’).

I preached on Sunday about reconciliation, a theme the Lord continues to bring me to reflect on. I said in that sermon that I consider true reconciliation, the uniting of two parties with conflicting views and beliefs, to be humanely impossible. There is no argument or rationality that has ever changed someone’s deeply held convictions, those things that shape our identity. This is a matter of a spiritual shift; the work of reconciliation is a deep transformation down in the secret of all parties’ hearts. This takes time, trust and a transcendent commitment to the work of peace beyond rational thought and understanding.

There is obviously a human aspect to this work; the choice is left solely on the part of both conflicting parties to participate. This is understandable as all relationships are based on a free choice to be ‘bonded’ to another. If there was no freedom of choice then the relationship would not be genuine. Love requires freedom to exist. To be ‘re-bonded’ (which is what reconciliation literally means) requires that same freedom. Reconciliation cannot be forced upon anyone.

If we consider this in the context of peace talks between any warring parties at the moment (Israel/Palestine, ISIS/Christians, Russia/Ukraine) we can begin to see how purely rational, intellectual peace negotiations continual fail. Legislation which forces ‘peace’ is a fake peace and never a true reconciliation. What is required to encourage real reconciliation is a spiritual change on both sides; a commitment to attempt to freely choose to love. For humans who struggle to trust in the unseeable future, the miraculous changes in our spiritual core or the change of the lens through which we see the world, this reconciliation is impossible. We cannot imagine how we could ever trust someone who has hurt us so severely and so we resist. We begin the stalemate conversations of

They move first.

No They move first.

It seems strange, at first, to read in this chapter that it is after advice, the use of Scripture, excommunication and even the extreme: flogging that St. Benedict suggests

If even this has no effect, let him try greater things – his prayers and those of the other brothers – so that the Lord may cure the sick brother, for he can do all things.

There is a great realism here in how St. Benedict sees correction taking place. He knows, like us, that we will try all human avenues first (praying that they will work, of course) but in the end we must stop and invite God in to work in the place where only God can work. There will be times when the ‘sickness’ can be cured simply and we are encouraged to participate in that healing work through action. Then there is the time when all possibilities have been explored and you pass the patient onto the expert.

cropped-color-calgary-header-3

Anointing with oil

All of this makes me think about the role of oil in liturgical settings.

(bear with me)

The use of oil is a contentious issue and one that not many people think much about. There are specific occasions when oil is required: baptism, confirmation, ordination, healing and the Last Rites. The biblical understanding of anointing with oil is not clear. It is mentioned 20 times in the whole canon and there is a distinction between ordinary oil and ‘anointing oil’. This anointing oil must be kept holy and separate,

”It shall not be used in any ordinary anointing of the body, and you shall make no other like it in composition; it is holy, and it shall be holy to you. Whoever compounds any like it or whoever puts any of it on an unqualified person shall be cut off from the people.” (Exodus 30:32-33)

There are strict rules in the Law of Moses as to the use of this oil but in the New Testament there is very little mention or use of oil. The disciples use oil on the sick (Mark 6:13) and James, in his letter, advises its use on the sick too (James 5:14). God is said to use oil on Jesus in the letter to the Hebrews,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
and the righteous sceptre is the sceptre of your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” (Hebrews 1:8-9)

My understanding, having read both Scripture and Church History is that anointing oil is to be used on people who are to be set apart; that is why we do it at baptism, confirmation and ordination. The use of oil in the ministry of healing and preparation for death is to set the sick person under the complete care of God. The use of oil in healing ministry is to be done cautiously due to an overuse and, therefore, belittling of its symbolic significance.

James, in his letter, is clear that prayer for the sick is what will save them but he does encourage anointing. So which is it?

I would want to say that the use of anointing oil is symbolic of the complete handing over of a patient to the mercy of God. This maintains an honouring of medical professions and the human intervention on diseases. We can pray whilst attempting human medical support and God will honour that but there comes a time in illness when doctors cannot do anymore. This is, of course, a particularly sensitive issue at the moment and I will not repeat my view on the Assisted Dying Bill. It is at this time of the end of medical support that anointing is to be done. This could be done when the patient decides to no longer receive medication or at the point the doctors no longer offer any help.

Anointing becomes the physical ritual that marks the end of looking to humans for help and the naming of our full trust in God to act in this situation. This is not to say that we do not trust God when we seek human support, God uses humans in his work, but there comes a time when God must work the impossible; this, in the case of illness, is either to heal miraculously or to guide a person into the rest of death. I still believe that only God can do that leading and if we humans attempt to take that control we overstep ourselves and it is called murder/suicide.

if we look at St. Benedict’s thoughts on discipline then this final removal of a brother from the monastery is a death of one kind. This should be the absolute last resort and must be done with the greatest revelation of the wisdom of God. It should not be done lightly or without the handing over of the situation totally to God. The burden of responsibility placed upon the abbot cannot be overstated and the pastoral sensitivity in these cases is paramount.

If we take the analogy of choice in death a little further here, then I would suggest that it is not the choice of the brother or the abbot to break this bond between them but the choice of God and there must be that time of waiting for God to act in the situation. This time cannot be rushed and a great deal of listening must be done. A service where the brother is anointed would be an appropriate symbolic act and we wait, in the midst of that suffering, for the hope of God to be revealed.

Reflection

In all moments of reconciliation there needs to be a deliberate stepping into the mysterious, miraculous hope of God. Without this submission to transcendence real reconciliation, in my mind, cannot be achieved. It is a step of faith into the unknown which, from our side, is always into darkness. Hope and light will be found if two things are present; God’s mercy and care as well as the choice of the conflicting party. The mercy of God is trustworthy and true and can be relied upon. The free choice to participate from our opposition is more tricky. More often than not it requires us to submit anyway as a sign of our desire to be in relationship with them. This is a tough task and we resist it more often than not.

I want to pray for the big conflicts currently being played out in the world today. I pray for both Israelis and Palestinians that they would cease the cycle of violence. I pray for ISIS and the Christians fleeing Mosul that they would succumb to the peace and love of God. I pray for Russia and Ukraine that they would know the mercy and care of God and enter into the beautiful dance of community and peace.

Come, Lord Jesus