Tag Archives: Narnia

Chapter 20: reverence in prayer

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If we wish to ask a favour of those who hold temporal power, we dare not do so except with humility and respect.

How do we pray?

At the end of this section on the Divine Office it is interesting that St. Benedict decides to end on the topic of humility. The chapter before this section was also about humility. It seems this is of the deepest importance to St. Benedict and is at the very heart of the Rule for community life. It has been this revisiting that has made me re-read my reflections on humility.

I still struggle with this. I wrestle in my inner life trying to work it out and allowing God to shape me free from my resistance. I am increasingly aware that one cannot do this work in isolation; one always needs a community around them to help in the practice of humility. This community must, together, commit to the work of supporting and holding one another as each one enters into the process of going deeper with God.

St. Benedict uses the experience of being in the present of humans who hold significant power and how, when we are with them, we are aware of our our own power (or lack of it). We naturally compare ourselves with one another and this is most definite when the contrast is large. It is only when the difference between us and others is clear that we are forced to acknowledge it to ourselves. It is in these times we know where we stand in the ‘pecking order’.

At the end of this week I will visit Archbishop John Sentamu of York. He has recently taken on the role as Episcopal oversight of the Deanery of York of which I am a part. He now is my bishop to whom I go to for clergy review, discipline and support. I have always really appreciated ++Sentamu’s ministry and we have shared many good conversations together. He ordained me both as a deacon and a priest and we have served together on the Step Forward conference run each year at Bishopthorpe Palace.

Despite having shared some social time together, as well as more formal occasions, I am always deeply aware of the weight of his presence and his authority. I may have questions or doubts as to how he uses that power but nonetheless I am acutely aware of his abilities to wield it both for good and (potentially) for bad. When we talk I rarely talk at great length due, in the most part, to my awareness of lack of knowledge and authority on subjects. On both legal, spiritual, theological and ethical matters ++Sentamu has more experience and expertise than I and should bow out of any debate. I did try once to argue that St. Aidan was to be given more credit than St. Paulinus and St. Augustine for the evangelisation of England… I tried but I think I failed!

This respect, forced or deserved, that I feel in the presence of ++Sentamu is not debilitating nor destructive of a relationship. As well as feeling inferior I also feel respected and cared for by him. My respect for him as a person is, I hope, mutual. I know he is interested in me and my ministry. I think he wants to see me flourish and wants to support me. I am listened to by him and, as much as he can, he looks out for me and holds me in some esteem. I am thankful for this relationship and thank God for our partnership in the Gospel.

St. Benedict uses this experience to portray our relationship with God. God is much more worthy of respect and awe than ++Sentamu. God alone is to be feared but, along with this fear there is also a deep sense of the safety and love God has for us, his children. When we go into his presence in pray we are to balance these emotions.

Some of us err, too much on the side of familial and breeze into God’s presence with conversation and chit chat. There’s nothing wrong with that. God loves to speak to us and have relationship with us but we should never take such relationship for granted. At times a colloquial relationship with God can lead to forgetting the heavy price paid for such a relationship which we should always be mindful of and thankful for. This awareness of the weighty grace shown to us should lead us into a deep awe and amazement at what he has done in order to have the conversation you so easily can have with him.

Others, however, err on the side of fear and trembling and see God so high and lofty above us that he remains distant from us with little affection between us. Christianity is unique in its understanding of God as, Abba Father. Jesus revealed a desire of God to be intimately involved in our lives like a good father is. Most religions see God as Creator and all powerful, and rightly so, but they miss out on that close and caring father image. Christians, following the example of Christ, emphasise this fatherly image because God has shown he cares for us by his death and resurrection.

God, in the Bible, is described as both a Lion and a Lamb. He is a lion because he is fierce and dangerous, ferocious. He is also known as a lamb, led to the slaughter, pastoral and innocent. The lion image creates in us a caution; no one would walk into a lion’s cage free from fear and respect but it would take something particularly peculiar for someone to be afraid of a lamb. Our approach to prayer and our relationship with God should be as C.S. Lewis describes it in his Narnia series. When the children enter Narnia for the first time, Aslan, the God figure in the series, is described by Mr and Mrs Beaver. Lucy asks whether Aslan is safe,

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.

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The different kinds of prayers

I am aware of the different types of prayer that we participate in and yet we only use one word for them all. We say prayers in church services, and at Divine Offices. We pray alone, in pairs and in small groups. We pray out loud and in silence. We pray requests to God. We pray for discernment. We listen. We talk. We pray out of duty and we pray out of need. Contemplation is prayer just as much as extemporary, charismatic prayers. All of these have something different about them but they’re all called ‘prayer’.

It is wrong to suggest one is superior to another but equally it would be wrong to not use one type by telling ourselves they are all the same. To say, “I don’t pray out loud because it’s just the same as praying in silence.” leads you away from praying with others and sharing the public side of our faith; it would be like saying, “I don’t talk to my friend when other people are in the room.” It’s weird! In this chapter, St. Benedict is speaking specifically about prayers in the Divine Office. Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert, suggests,

The admonition on short prayer in community comes from the way in which our ancestors looked at prayer. Quite often the saying of prayers was seen as distinct from the prayer itself. After saying a prayer, then one prayed in the heart and this was considered “prayer.” So in some of the early traditions, after each Psalm there was a short period for this spontaneous cry from the heart to the Lord. It is this type of prayer that must be kept short and pure–and not prolonged because it really cannot be prolonged. Attempts to prolong such prayer are usually just show and not reality. (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 20: Reverence in Prayer”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, May 20 2014, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/890.html)

Reflection

I continue to reflect on the place of prayer in communities. I’d be interested to know if research has been done on how the frequency and nature of prayer changes a communities experience and understanding of God. I am currently part of two particular communities with very different views on prayer. One, my parish church, has a broad understanding of prayer and each member seems to have a different view on what it is and how it should be done. This emphasis is not bad and, as a minister and teacher in the community, it is part of my role to encourage people to develop their prayer life to all the different types of prayer. The other community is Burning Fences which used to read a liturgy from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community, at the end of our weekly gathering and now finds another kind of prayer. It was noted during a discussion last week that the inclusion of prayer has slowly morphed into a reflection on spirituality rather than a direct prayer. The place of prayer, i.e. talking directly to God, in Burning Fences is an interesting topic which we will need to raise as we move forward.

Abba Father, Glorious and Majestic Creator of the cosmos, I thank you for being my lion, defending me from foes and being able to fight for me the powers that seek to oppress me. I thank you also for being the lamb that was slain. I thank you that I can meet you in the Temple, where you sit on a throne high and lifted up and that I can meet you in the street, in the face of the poor and down cast, that I know you close by in my home and work.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 5: obedience

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The first degree of humility is prompt obedience.

Why should I listen?

There is a myth that ‘millennials’ (my generation who have grown up saddling the millennium) have no respect for authority. In reality I think we do have respect for authority but the authority must be earned before it can be trusted. This does lead to many of us dismissing first instances of authority, particularly if it is enforced with rigor; this is a dangerous tendency. Our primary authority is no longer in older figures, previous generations but rather in peers; this is an even greater danger for what it leads to is a narcissistic, blind belief in our own power, understanding and un-walked wisdom.

Blogger, Anna Mussmann, has written a really interesting critique on culture using the young adult fiction which is popular. The article is called ‘Millenials Think Authority Figures Are Untrustworthy Idiots, And Modern Culture Is To Blame’ and takes stories such as Hunger Games, Finding Nemo and Splendors and Glooms to explore what these books have taught and continue to teach us growing up in this culture. Mussmann argues,

…when young adult fiction encourages reliance on transitory, peer-based relationships, it casts off the unifying role that classic literature once played. Our stories no longer bind multiple generations together. Instead they divide them… we even structure young people’s lives in ways that decrease adult influence and increase peer culture: our children are separated by age at school and attend age-specific youth programs at church (often never participating in traditional services that are designed for all-ages). They listen to their own music and text in their own language. The qualities which unify a culture, such as music, etiquette rules, and stories, are all things of which youth have their own.

This article is fascinating when considering my own attitude to obedience to authority figures of older generations. The issue, in my eyes, is always with them. This is an unhealthy reaction to many older people who have lived and experienced many things. I don’t want to dismiss my generation too quickly though. I do feel there’s always been an earning of trust and some blame must fall onto the previous generation who, after dismissing their parents for the mess of two world wars and the violent climax of enlightenment and modernism, felt they should never impose obedience on their children. In this context is it any wonder that young people today have little to no moral compass to guide them through the chaotic adolescence.

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you will know that over the last two or three years I have been increasingly vocal about ethics and virtues and the nature of moral discussions (read On Secularism, The Hunch, The Compulsion and The Overwhelming Pain, The Pope is Dust Just Like You and There is No Majority). The heady mix of my generation with my parents’ generation when running a society, is a cocktail for increasingly isolated people with highly subjective opinions to right and wrong trying to co-habit a claustrophobic space which leads inevitably to an increase in violence, physical and political. Our politic is broken because we have taken a shared narrative away and allowed a vacuum to be created. We now happily worship the absence in true nihilistic fashion.

Many young adults, especially those from the less affluent backgrounds, feel that they live in a world where family and community have eroded to the point of dysfunction. Personal loyalty may be their only hope in a dark, chaotic, and existential world. This kind of loyalty is the same moral value on which both gangs and tribes are built, and in many ways, our culture encourages a new kind of clique-like tribalism. Paradoxically, however, such loyalty is also constantly mutating, because our peer-oriented relationships (friendships and marriages) are self-chosen and therefore dissolvable. In real life the group loyalties break and reconfigure under strain. Such single-generation tribalism is also incredibly narrow. G. K. Chesterton argues that families are far more broadening than self-chosen companions because they force individuals to learn to understand many kinds of people. (Anna Mussmann, ‘Millenials Think Authority Figures Are Untrustworthy Idiots, And Modern Culture Is To Blame’, The Federalist, February 4th 2014, http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/23/millennials-think-authority-figures-are-untrustworthy-idiots-and-modern-culture-is-to-blame/)

Through this millennial lens I read St. Benedict’s words on obedience. I have explored in the previous weeks the role and nature of the abbot and have wrestled personally with my own attitude to the leader figure. I would argue that it is right, at this time, to reshape our understanding of leadership to fit the culture. In order to do that a leader must become an advocate to the people under his/her authority and we should embrace a more flat leadership model, organic in nature. This does not mean that the leader must become a friend, homogenous to the group, for that complicates the role of wisdom and obedience needed in order for personal and communal growth to occur. Authority is needed and it must remain external to the self. Tribalism is not a healthy way to exist but there are elements of it that should be encouraged; togetherness, sociality, loyalty but in Narnia this balance between friendship and authority is beautifully portrayed in the character of Aslan who remains aloof and separate from the children who must negotiate the strange and dangerous world of Narnia. I return again to the model of the ensemble theatre company; there is a sharing of leadership and direction but the role of the director becomes one of facilitator and ‘story-keeper’. This role ensures that authority is named and placed in a specific place. The challenge comes when the person who takes on that role mis-uses it. This is why the selection of such a person must come from the group and is placed on them through a sense of vocation and discerned calling.

Aslan’s style is to be alongside, encouraging but at times to demand the respect and authority to, enigmatically at times, to guide the children into strange and unknown experiences. The children do not understand why at the time but they are encouraged to trust the authority of figure to do it anyway. My generation would instinctively baulk at such suggestion,

Why should we?

Who does he think he is?

He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what’s good for me.

When I think of my personal authority figures, the ones who know me and guide me and whom I respect and obey, most of them are of a previous generation. They have earned my trust but remain separate enough from me to be able to command me and my will.

The church, I feel, must reflect on this cultural issue seriously when we discuss the nature of leadership and authority. There needs to be an overhaul of our images and models of leadership and I am increasingly convinced that we must return to a ‘priestly’ model where reconciliation and spiritual depth are primary roles. Obedience is demanded like Jesus demanded it; not by His words first but by His character. He was obviously a man who commanded attention but where it came from, no one could tell. Jesus, of course, is unique but as priest’s we are called to be His ambassadors in His Body, the Church. We are called to stand in His place between people and places, heaven and earth. We are to follow Him closely to encourage the people of God to do likewise. We must commit our lives to being lead by our Master in obedience and to speak the commands we follow to those whom God calls us to.
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Sacrificial Obedience

Not satisfied with calling the monks to obedience, St. Benedict takes it one step further and asks them to do so ‘without fear, laziness, hesitance or protest.’

Orders should be carried out cheerfully…God will not be pleased by the monk who obeys grudgingly, not only murmuring in words but even in his heart.

I am guilty of saying that I am happy to obey authority but doing so questioningly and with reservation. I act, in line with commands, suspiciously or creatively twisting the will of my superior to fit my own desires and will. St. Benedict is clear that true spiritual growth will occur when ‘These disciples must obediently step lively to the commanding voice – giving up their possessions, and their own will.’

I’m not sure if what I am about to suggest is skewed by my generational attitude to authority but I wonder if there’s an understanding here that the abbott himself is under the authority of the Rule and, prior to being called to the role of abbott has shown himself obedient to it. Thus his authority has been proved through his own discipleship. I wonder if his own discipleship and obedience must remain the hallmark of his leadership. The abbott must, in this understanding, follow and imitate Jesus, his Master, who followed and imitated His Father.

Reflection

This week’s chapter has cut to the heart of some personal issues for me and I am convicted to pray through my attitude. There is a sense in which it is a nudging back in line with God’s will and not a whole hearted overhaul. In parish ministry at this time there is a large confusion about right and healthy distinctions between ordained ministers and laity. In the past there has been some devastating situations caused by those in authority in the church and this has destroyed much of the Church’s authority. To destroy the whole thing and dismiss the tradition is too risky and dangerous and is akin to throwing ‘the baby out with the bath water’. There is such a call to wisdom but, unfortunately, my generation in this culutre will struggle to find wisdom for we no longer ascribe to a shared cultural narrative and to any virtues of character. The characters we share are story-less, peer-guided and self selected. With no wisdom this self-selection is vacuuous and vapour and we will lead ourselves ever darker into the abyss of nihilistic existence.

Lord have mercy upon us all.

Come, Lord Jesus.