Tag Archives: Rule

Chapter 1.v Be willing to hold all things in common…

Let those that have property in the world, as they enter the monastery, be prepared to willingly hold it all in common.

It would be amiss of me not to mention, for those of you who have not been reading the poetry I have published over the last two months, that on Friday 6th July my wife, Sarah, died. Words still cannot express the devastation that I am still experiencing. The vast abyss that now characterises my inner life and the challenges I face in the chaos of my external life is exhausting and often overwhelming. I have had no inclination to do anything and continue to struggle to know which direction to move in. Slowly, however, I am becoming accustomed to this new state of being. The wound is slowly scarring and I am daring to look forward to the day when I can, like all scars, speak of healing, hope and God’s redemptive power… that day is not yet nor on the horizon, but it is a whisper of a future I cannot see but trust will be.

I start by talking about my lack of motivation in part to explain why reflecting on how the Rule of St. Augustine speaks to the strategy and structure of the Church has been far from my mind. I share my current situation, also, to say that it is in this context that I pick up the Rule of St. Augustine and continue to read on the importance of sharing property and possessions if a community is ever to share one heart and mind. This current verse is paired with the next which is its reverse, ‘Those that have no property in the world must not, in the monastery, look for those things that, outside, they were unable to have.’ I did consider putting the verses together and tackle both simultaneously but decided against it. I chose not to for the simple reason that the next verse is accompanied by further, significant teaching on ‘frailty’ and the state of poverty itself. Although I will touch on this subject here I want to say much more about it than can fit into this post.

From the outset I need to be upfront on my own particularity: I am middle class. I come from a relatively wealthy family; ‘comfortable’, we would say. I can count on one hand the times when I have experienced personal poverty in regards to possessions/material wealth and so this verse is clearly speaking to me and those in my economic bracket. It needs to be said as well that the Church of England is almost totally made up of people like me. Yes, there are wonderful exceptions, but the clergy and, therefore, bishops are mainly replicas of me, economically speaking. This verse, therefore, speaks to the Church of England. As I stated at the beginning of this series, I am interested in how the Rule of St Augustine speaks not primarily to me personally but to the wider Church as I ask how we might ‘monasticize first the clergy, by imposing on them a standard of life previously reserved for monks, and then the entire world.’ (Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p.6)

When I came to my current context there was a clear intent to reach out to the estate which constitutes over half of our parish. This estate, like the one in my last parish, is not large nor does it have the levels of depravation seen in other parts of the country but it still has its profound issues with poverty. “Why,” I asked myself, “if there is such a desire to serve the estate, are we not encountering the people of that estate very often?” Like my previous parish there was a conscious effort to reach out and ‘impact’ the estate but nothing seemed to be making a difference. I battled with this missional confusion for many years. It was not until I started reading the testimonies of the Oxford Movement’s slum priests and their spiritual descendants who served in my very parish context that I realised the problem. It was not about them, the situation or the model. It was about us.

It is too easy to subtly and unconsciously slip into doing things for or to ‘the poor’. When we talk about reaching out it can, due to our deep-seated fear and insecurities, be changed in our mind to feel we are called to reach out to ‘them’. We should not berate ourselves too much, however, as this is understandable but we should name it and face the truth. Since this realisation I have been deliberate in talking about becoming a ‘church of the poor’ not just for the poor. This means that we are to seek not to offer aspirations of material and cultural wealth, to merely alleviate financial difficulty but to seek to be transformed, ourselves, in order to have relationship with others. In this way we become more like the Christ presented by St. Paul in Philippians 2:1-8 and 2 Corinthians 8:9, who gave up the riches of heaven and became poor in order to have relationship with us.

How, therefore, do we become poor whilst also seeking to help the poor?

There is a story in the gospels of Jesus being asked by a ‘certain ruler’ what did he need to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by listing some of the Ten Commandments (interestingly he does not list them all but, I would argue, he lists only those that legislate human relationships: adultery, murder, stealing, lying and honouring our father and mother. For more on this and the rest of the passage listen to my sermon on it here.) to which the ruler responds, “All these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus replies, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” There are several things I struggle with in this passage but I want to name just two of them: 1. Sell my property to whom? and 2. Who are the poor?

Buying and selling is a transaction where two parties agree on the relative value of certain items in order to give a fair exchange for them. When Jesus suggests the ruler sells everything he has this would require the ruler to give measurable value to all the items he he has and find someone who could give him the equivalent in return; most likely in currency (gold, silver, etc.) This is an important exercise for us all to do. What value do we give to the things we possess? What are we investing our time and money in? The gospel writers, at this point tell us that the ruler went away sad because he was ‘very rich’. He may have quickly totted up a handful of items and gave them significant market value and that would require the ruler to sell the property/possessions to another rich person. Consider the next step though. After exchanging these items for money Jesus suggests giving it all to the poor who will then use that money to buy similar items that had been sold from other people: the rich. Certainly the ruler would become poor but it would not deal with poverty itself. It will not help the poor in anyway it will only help the rich. The poor would no doubt struggle to purchase the same items at the same value, the rich would be seeking to make a profit from the purchase and so will sell it for higher value. Jesus isn’t attempting to solve the economy of the time but is talking about a personal response to wealth and where this particular person invests value. Selling everything and giving to the poor is not a catch all command. I am not suggesting that it is not a good thing to be challenged to do but we underestimate the deeper lesson being taught here.

The ruler’s initial question betrays his individualistic vision of the life of faith: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” For this ruler, the life of faith is a private individualistic endeavour which does not impact other people. Eternal life is another possession he can have. Others can also have it but he doesn’t need to share it. The pursuit towards eternal life, for Jesus, is a shared journey; we inherit eternal life. That’s why, I think, Jesus only mentions the social commandments. To tackle this problem Jesus begins to prod the rich ruler towards the heart of his personal issue. This command to sell everything is about his attitude to those possessions, the value he invests into them and the lack of value the ruler truly gives to the pursuit of eternal life. Selling our possessions doesn’t solve economic issues. Our current economic issues are symptomatic of our messed up value system. Consider briefly the hierarchy of financial value we, as a society, give to different jobs. Or consider what we as a society spend our money on and why. Buying and selling only ever benefits those who control the value system of the society in which they operate. For the ruler, as with us, we must begin to enter into a new value system.

The second concern, who are the poor that Jesus speaks of, may seem pretty obvious but let us ponder the question further.

When the rich man sells everything, he no longer possesses anything. All he has at this point is a pocketful of cash and no pockets because he has sold all his clothes! Where is he going to live? What is he going to wear? Makes me think of this great sketch by Richard Herring and Stewart Lee.

When the ruler gives money to the poor he is handing over his only possibility of survival. From that day on he will be reliant on the generosity of other people giving to him. He is entering into the life of poverty where he can no longer afford to be alone in the world. ‘The poor’ to whom he gives his money may be some of the people he will rely on and so he will return to them and beg for some of the money back. I wonder how he might phrase that request for alms. Maybe he will give his money to some distant poor who he won’t encounter again and, therefore the people to whom he goes to beg from will not know his situation nor his history.

The reason I am investigating this aspect of the story is to draw our attention to the final bit of Jesus’ suggestion, “Then come, follow me.” This is the only real answer to the ruler’s initial question. How do I inherit eternal life? Firstly I do not inherit eternal life but I share in the inheritance of eternal life given to those who pursue it together with one heart and mind. The way we inherit eternal life is by following Jesus, drawing close to him, relying on him to lead and direct our every thought and choice. The rest of life is given its proper value through the lens of Christ. If we look at the world without that lens we misvalue everything and we struggle. Jesus challenges the rich ruler as he should challenge us on our value system.

Since Sarah died I have spent time sorting through her possessions. I have had to make decisions on what I should keep and what should be given away. In order to decide what goes where I have tried to ask myself, “why did Sarah buy this?” This is trying to discern what value did Sarah give to the item and what new value do I give to it. There have been some items I couldn’t get rid of quick enough, mainly because Sarah bought them during one of her many fads/short lived hobbies. Others I got rid of because I was never going to use them, e.g. toiletries and make up. Most of her clothes were given to her friends and the rest given to charity shops for other people to enjoy (I have kept some items for the time being to act as mementos as I continue to grieve and say goodbye.) Most items, however, I have kept because we shared the. They were no longer hers or mine but ours. There are lots of things she bought for herself but I have used so often that I consider them mine. There are items, like her craft equipment, which I may use once in a blue moon but I am not sure where to put them or send them to.

St. Augustine commands that those with property and possessions, earthly riches are to be willing to hold those things in common with the community. To become poor, in this way, is to re-evaluate the riches we have. To consider that what we possess in earthly things is of little value compared with the goal of our true pursuit. To hold things for usefulness but to share out that use to others. In this way we continue to enter into the mindset we discussed last time.

So abundant was the outpouring of spiritual grace in the Early Church, that not only were the faithful content with little, but they esteemed it joy of the highest kind to feel that they had nothing of their own. “Having nothing, yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:10)(Hugh of St. Victor, Explanation, p.12)

In Hugh of St Victor’s commentary he suggests there are ‘two things we must renounce for God’s sake: the right to possess and the wish to acquire.’ (Hugh of St. Victor, Explanation, p.13) By being willing to sell everything we have if necessary is a process of letting go of our right to possess anything at all. Giving that money away is relinquishing our capability to acquire new things. For the rich ruler this impacts not just his earthly life but his eternal life too in that he must let go of his right to possess eternal life through some moral superiority of fulfilling criteria and relinquishing his capability of acquiring eternal life through his own strength, rather relying on others to inherit it with him.

To monasticize the clergy and indeed the whole Church, therefore, begins by intentionally re-evaluating our values and our assets, both earthly and spiritual and ensuring that we prioritise all these gifts in proportion. Selling and buying only benefits those who control the value system, so how might we be a church of the poor whilst helping the poor in times of great financial crisis? I suggest it is about offering an alternative value system that judges the poor to be poor. St. Augustine is inviting us to consider that we let go of our sense of entitlement to value and possession and to see them as gift and then to relinquish our desire to invest value in objects rather than relationship. When we prioritise the relationship with brothers and sisters in pursuit of following Jesus then we receive back infinite value which possessions never return. This is the first step to growing a unity of heart and mind.

Therefore our Lord says in the Gospel: “Every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:33). And again: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself” (Lk 9:23). The first of these divine utterances refers to earthly goods: the second to the will. For it is not enough to give up exterior possessions, unless we cut off all interior concupiscence as well.(Hugh of St. Victor, Explanation, p.13)

Chapter 1.iv Each one receives whatever they have need of

Do not call anything your own, but hold all you have in common. Food and clothing will be distributed to each of you by your superior, not equally to all, because you do not have the same strength, but to each one according to their needs.

Most of the first chapter of the Rule of St. Augustine centres on the sharing of property between members of the community. We will explore this across the next few weeks as we go through each verse. I want to focus this time on the issues of equality and equity within verse 4 to set us on a particular course of interpretation for the coming verses. A point must be made now, however, that will feed through the next few weeks’ reflections but is important to make now: sharing possessions is essential if we are going to share our lives.

In order for persons to give, they must have. I suggested last time that,

Mutual Flourishing will never work when the focus is to ensure our own flourishing but rather when we begin to sacrifice our own flourishing for the sake of someone else’s. My most powerful relationships are the ones forged in the crucible of radical, risky self-denial when we dared to decide to outdo each other in love and honour and thus dismiss our own compulsion to look after ourselves first. It is when we have served one another, not looking for our own needs to be met but to meet the needs of the other, that our needs do indeed get met and, often, I have found that my perceived needs were not needs at all but wants. It is in this mutuality of love that I have found peace in being gifted the care and wisdom of others over my limited understanding of my own requirements.

This form of relationship is indeed risky and is entered into with great daring! For it to take root in reality and for us to really rely on others in community we must trust that there is mutuality in sharing; otherwise power is abused and the will to give is eroded and ultimately lost. In order for persons to give love/trust, they must have love/trust. The sharing of heart and mind will cost us heavily as we sacrifice our own will for the will of the community. None of us can jump from isolation and self-reliance to mutuality and trust in community. The sharing of possessions is a good first step towards this ultimate goal. Those who can be trusted with little may be trusted with more.

The owning of resources and means of attaining resources is a position of power. This position becomes increasingly valuable when resources are seen as scarce or hard to come by. In abundance individuals are allowed to graze freely for themselves as the impact on the wider society is not felt in the short term. When there is much to go round, each individual can own equally as much as everyone else; the aim is to ensure everyone has the same amount of resources as others. When the resources become harder to come by, that freedom to take and have whatever we desire is challenged and we move into more legislated distribution. In more meagre times, the management of materials is an imposition which, if we have experienced the benefits of bounty, we may balk at. In these stricter times, society can’t ensure all the same stock. Decisions must be made, therefore, as to who needs resources and who can do without.

Imagine there is a harvest of 1040 units of wheat, and each unit of wheat is able to feed a person for a week. The community consists of 100 people. There is ample in that harvest to give to each individual double portions for each week of the year. Despite the person only needing 1 unit they can own 2 units, if they desire and it is the agreement with others. Now imagine that the harvest yields the same amount (roughly) each year for a decade or so. The members of the community will get used to having access to 2 units of wheat each week. Then the harvest only yields 520 units of wheat. This still ensures each member can have their 1 unit of wheat and survive. Some will complain that the life they were accustomed to is no longer around but there’s still enough to feed everyone. There may well be conversations about how to ensure fair distribution but there is enough for everyone to have their basic rations met. Now imagine that the harvest only yields 260 units of wheat! This means that there is not enough to ensure everyone has the 1 unit a week to feed themselves. It is in this situation (presuming no saving has taken place) that some will go without at some time. How do you choose who gets what?

The above picture of a two-dimensional community who only eat wheat helps us to open up a conversation on the difference between equality and equity. When resources are scarce the distribution of them becomes significant in the survival of the community. Sharing equally, giving everyone the same amount of resources, is fine when there’s enough to give basic necessity but when there is not enough, sharing equally is not good as everyone will suffer due to no-one getting their basic amount to survive. The people who burn off energy to attain the resource (net givers) may require more than those who do not (net receivers) in order to survive and potentially return the yield to abundance later. This, however, means that some who are unable to work don’t get to survive.

There is a famous image of the difference between equality and equity which shows three people of different heights trying to watch a baseball game over a fence. In the picture of equality they all stand on the same size box meaning that the shorter person cannot see the game and the medium sized person can only just see the game. In the picture of equity the taller person doesn’t need a box, the medium sized person requires one box and the shorter of the three needs two boxes to see over the fence. This is helpful to separate out the problem we faced with the wheat-eating community above and can be distinguished as ‘equality of opportunity’ and ‘equality of outcome’. Equality of opportunity ensures everyone starts the race at the same time. Equality of outcome ensures everyone finishes the race at the same time.

Equality of opportunity, where everyone receives the same, seeks to create a level playing field but it fails to take into consideration particular needs and the advantages/disadvantages each member has. It is unfair that the tall person gets help when they don’t need it and the same amount doesn’t even help the shorter person to see the game. Equality of outcome, seems much fairer on the face of it as it ensures everyone ends up with the same amount and that all advantages/disadvantages are actually eradicated. It is still unfair, however.

In the pictures, height is the deciding differential factor; height, therefore, usually represents pre-conditioned wealth or social status, but what if it represents talents/strengths, skill/experience? If you were to look at the image from the other side of the fence you’d see all three persons as equal in talent/strength without being able to acknowledge the help that one had particularly received. Imagine you were the tall person and you had worked hard to get that tall (the analogy breaks down, I know, but stay with me!) but then another person who had it handed to them on two boxes was praised equally for the results, you’d consider that unfair. It would affect how much you were willing to work if, the distributers of the boxes were going to ensure everyone ends up being seen as the same. This is the issue that arises when we reward all players of games equally whether they won or not.

I have been reading a fascinating book by Simon Sinek called, ‘Leaders Eat Last: why some teams pull together and others don’t’. This book explores the natural hormones that made our primitive ancestors survive and thrive in the wildernesses of pre-history. Sinek suggests that a balance of, what he calls, ‘selfish hormones’ (Endorphin – the pain-masking hormone and Dopamine – the goal achieving hormone) and the ‘selfless hormones’ (Serotonin – the responsibility hormone and Oxytocin – the relationship hormone) ensures we experience happiness and success. Serotonin is released when we are thanked/praised for efforts made or for good behaviour. In the example of equality of outcome, the reality is that the tall person who contributed the most on their own will not be given the relative praise they are due and thus will not receive enough serotonin to make it worth while. They will ask, “Why did I bother contributing all that when my colleague did little (excuse the pun) and was praised just as highly?” The shorter person, however, receives a great kick of dopamine as they have achieved something but it’s short lived and relied on unfair help. Sinek argues that the environments we live and work in effect our hormone release and we must remain aware of what hormones our culture is encouraging to be released in us. Our current culture runs on the release of dopamine, the quick fix of achieving at any cost. In pre-history, this hormone ensured the cavemen (and it was men) went out to hunt for food. In modern day we are rewarded for reaching goals and targets but this means that we seek to achieve to the detriment of other people; this makes us highly competitive and individualised. Whilst we continue to seek the kick of dopamine, the most powerful of our hormones and the hormone connected with addictions of all kinds, we will not begin to counteract the painful effects of the negative hormone cortisol, our internal alarm system.

When we experience trauma or pain our bodies learn to associate certain stimulus with pain. Thus when we experience those stimuli again our bodies release another type of hormone called cortisol which puts us on our guard and triggers our ‘flight’, ‘flight’, or ‘freeze’ responses. This is called ‘being triggered’. When you hear a noise in the night or you suspect someone is threatening you your body release cortisol to ensure you are alert. Cortisol, if not used/burnt off, sits in your body and does great harm to our internal organs. Our bodies are like a smoke alarm which can detect smoke but can’t differentiate between the smoke of a fire or the natural smoke created when cooking bacon under a grill. It will release the same alarm (cortisol) whether there is a real danger or not. If we imagine danger we get the same injection of hormone than when there is real danger. If our bodies release cortisol unnecessarily the hormone that counteracts it and hinders it from doing damage, is oxytocin (the relationship hormone). Oxytocin is released when we feel safe and protected within a group or community and the hormone that encourages us to seek out oxytocin? Serotonin. The importance of trust within an organisation cannot be overstated. It is the ‘circle of safety’, the feeling that others will ensure you not only survive but thrive, that will encourage and inspire you to co-operate, collaborate and to innovate to ensure the success of the organisation and, only then, your own success.

The main problem, however, with the illustration of the three spectators of baseball is that it presumes the three individuals a)need to see the game and b)need to see the game at the same time. What if there was only one box and not three? Not everyone could be able to see the game. The shorter person would not be able to even if they had one box because they need two boxes to see but  the medium sized person would be able to benefit. Under the rules of equality of outcome, however, none of the people could watch the game as the taller person would be encouraged to stoop down to be of the same height as their shorter counterpart.

We are, in our highly individualised society, starved of oxytocin and addicted to dopamine. We are also riddled with cortisol as we continue to live stressful, anxious and paranoid lives. In this environment we have learnt that, in order to feel happiness, we must get that addictive high of the quick-release but short lived dopamine by fulfilling our goals and attaining what we value in our society; material wealth and power. When these are in short supply then we fight for them rather than consider the seeking out of the slow-release but long term high created by serotonin or oxytocin. When the three persons watching a baseball game begin to invest in relationship and start to consider themselves as a community, they would be able to collaborate, co-operate and ensure those of them who needed (not just wanted) to see the game could and they would no longer need to compete against one another for the resource of boxes and then the whole would benefit from the watching of the game.

St. Augustine, in his sermon on Psalm 132, writes,

If each person owned and held his own goods for himself alone, then he would have only his own. But when you share your own goods in common, then the goods of others become your goods too.(St, Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 132, cited in Tarsicius J. Van Bavel, The Rule of St. Augustine (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1996) p.50)

If we can begin to see ourselves not as isolated individuals but a part of one body in unity of multiplicity, then we can begin to share out the resources attained by the community in a way which benefits the whole not just a few. When the body receives nourishments from food it distributes the necessary items to the correct part of the body but every part of the body benefits from the nutrition. In this way sharing becomes a way of eradicating need but not just by satisfying that need.

Hugh of St. Victor, in his commentary on the Rule of St. Augustine discusses the New Testament’s description of the Early Church as a community where ‘there was not a needy person among them.’

So abundant was the outpouring of spiritual grace in the Early Church, that not only were the faithful content with little, but they esteemed it joy of the highest kind to feel that they had nothing of their own. “Having nothing, yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:10)(Hugh of St. Victor, Explanation, p.12)

He goes on to differentiate between want and need,

In this matter, then, regard must be had, not to the desire of the flesh, but to each one’s natural constitution. The satisfaction of the desires of sensuality involves much more than bare necessity. So that under the precept of providing what is needed for everyone, the practice to be adopted is that the flesh be nourished in such a way that it may be fit to give its due service, and on the other hand, that it be kept under so that it may not proudly revolt against the spirit.(Ibid.)

I don’t believe that the Christian community in Acts 4 all had abundant resources and no need, rather, I interpret it as the community found satisfaction in what they shared and understood that all available resources were available to them and each was given resources according to their need. I am often reminded, when we pray ‘give us today our daily bread’, of Shane Claiborne’s teaching on this phrase.

…we are to pray this day for “our daily bread.” We are not to pray “my daily bread,” as if I can separate my own sustenance from my brother’s or sister’s…”our” means “us”. We are not to pray for our daily steak, but for the simple nourishment of bread. We are not to pray for tomorrow’s bread or next week’s bread…just today’s.(Shane Claiborne and John M. Perkins, Follow Me To Freedom: leading and following as an ordinary radical (California: Regal, 2009) p.156)

To counteract our competitive, consumerist and individualised society the Rule of St. Augustine, and the monastic life in general, challenges our personal understanding of what we need and what we deserve. It raises our heads from the scarcity of our solitary possessions set in the story of seclusion and exposure to the sustainable setting of shared social safety. We must, if we are to enter into this united life of simplicity, look carefully at the cultural environment in which we live and ensure that it encourages the balanced release of the all four happiness hormones and that includes oxytocin – the relationship hormone.

Why is it so difficult for sisters and brothers to be of one heart? Because they are struggling among themselves for possession of the earth…They must strive after possessions that cannot be divided, then they will always be of one heart. For what is the reason that discord arises among sisters and brothers? What is it that interferes with love? All people have indeed come forth from the one womb. Why, then, are they not of one spirit? For what other reason than that their spirit is concentrated upon themselves and everyone is mindful only of his own share.(St, Augustine, Sermon 359,i-ii, cited in Tarsicius J. Van Bavel, The Rule of St. Augustine (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1996) p.51-2)

Chapter 1.iii Being of one heart and mind in God

Before all else, the reason that you are gathered together is that you live in harmony in one house, being of one heart and mind in God.

In an introduction to the Rule of St Augustine, Tarsicius J. Van Bavel OSA suggests,

Pachomius, Basil and Augustine all laid great stress on community life. The reason for this was that they were convinced that the orientation to one’s own self and individualism formed the greatest obstacle to the realisation of the gospel.

For those who have been reading my blog for some time will not be surprised to hear that I agree wholeheartedly with Pachomius, Basil and Augustine. It is the pervasive perversion of the gospel by our increasingly narcissistic culture that must be addressed before all else and it is this which Augustine (after some short preliminary sentences) begins his Rule.
Chapter 1.3, quoted above, is filled with ‘oneness’; the community is gathered ‘as one‘(tr. together), to live in ‘one spirit'(tr. harmony) in one house being of one mind and one heart in God. This oneness, however, is rooted in reality of plurality of persons within community. This is not about being single or unique, cut off and divorced, as if we are to achieve some atomised autonomy; rather the complete opposite. The oneness Augustine is alluding to is a simplicity of life, for him, achieved only in community. In his sermon on Psalm 4, Augustine concludes,

…singleness is observed among the saints: of whom it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, “and of the multitude of them that believed, there was one soul, and one heart.” (Acts 4:32) In singleness, then, and simplicity, removed, that is, from the multitude and crowd of things, that are born and die, we ought to be lovers of eternity, and unity, if we desire to cleave to the one God and our Lord. (St. Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 4,x)

It is in sharing a single-mindedness in God which is the source of unity. We are to, if we are to achieve the oneness expressed in Acts 4:32, cast off the multiplicity of this world, all things temporal and transient and seek the eternal, the things of our totally united, one God. It is the trinitarian unity that is our goal not some individualised peace.

This touches on an important lesson I continue to learn in our current debates on unity within the Church. We have adopted the language of tolerance which is a poor attempt at unity. Tolerance asks us to accept the presence of difference as a necessary price for peace but fails to demand the movement into true relationship with another. Tolerance says, “You’re ok as long as I don’t have to interact with you.” Tolerance keeps difference at a distance, small as that may be. Peace, the kind given by God, brings difference into a unity. This is impossible for us humans to achieve because we are hardwired to self-protect. Tolerance is an outward peace; we are to seek an inner peace of perfect unity.

In another sermon, this time on Psalm 132, Augustine observes,

Only those in whom love for Christ is perfect truly live together in unity. For those in whom love for Christ is not perfect may well live together, but they are unpleasant, troublesome and rebellious… Many sisters and brothers in religious communities are like this; only to outward appearances do they live together. (St, Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 132, 2 and 12, cited in Tarsicius J. Van Bavel, The Rule of St. Augustine (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1996) p.44)

It is not sufficient for Augustine for people just to live together side by side sharing an outward life together. If there is not a shared conviction that they seek to be united in mind and heart then there outward unity means nothing. Hugh of St. Victor suggests, ‘it is of no avail that the same walls encompass us if difference of will separate us.’ (Hugh of St. Victor, Dom. Aloysius Smith (tr.), Explanation of the Rule of St Augustine (London: Sands and Company, 1955) p.3) Our attitude to difference in the church interests me immensely. We seem to use the celebration of difference as a form of ‘get out of jail free’ card. This is not to say that I dislike difference or believe it should be eradicated; no. We do, however, too often claim ‘the celebration of difference’ when we feel the challenge to engage with it in our inner life. In celebrating it we hold it up as an object outside of our heart. We can continue to be us, separate from the other without any compulsion to relate intimately with them. Our celebration avoids the discomfort that should compel us to love as Christ loved us, at great cost.

This causes me to speak briefly on ‘Mutual Flourishing’.

I serve a parish in the diocese of Sheffield which, last year, was gripped by fierce division over the appointment of +Philip North as Diocesan Bishop. +Philip North is a traditionalist bishop who does not agree with the ordination of women. How would a Diocesan Bishop preside over the ministry of the Church in communion when they do not recognise the ordained ministry of nearly half his priests and deacons? As people protested and everyone shared their opinion, demanding one thing or another, a conversation on the 5 principles of mutual flourishing arose. It seemed that these principles, the single piece of legislation which enabled women to be ordained into the episcopacy, was good if it achieved the desired outcome (women flourishing as bishops) but when the principles impacted us negatively (those who disagreed were allowed to flourish) we began to question their validity.

I don’t agree with +Philip North on the issue of the ordination of women. I need to say that in case I’m pigeon-holed! I did, however, support his appointment and was willing to work with him in discovering with the whole Church how we worked towards ‘Mutual Flourishing’. I was deeply pained, therefore, with the way in which he was treated and the way in which many brothers and sisters spoke to, and about, one another. It was clear, throughout the sorry process that our love for Christ was not perfect. The form of political discourse that now runs rampant within God’s Church is unbecoming of the Bride of Christ and destroys her unity with each manoeuvre made by opposing polemical forces. For me, again and again, it is not the legislation which needs the work but the inner hearts and minds of Christ’s disciples. Our outward unity (the little scraps that remain) means nothing if we are not intentionally seeking an inner unity.

Hugh of St. Victor writes,

For what chiefly conduces to concord is that each one study to do the will of another unto good, rather than his own. This is the sign of great humility… if I seek my own will and another is intent upon following hers, forthwith divisions arise and quarrels, anger and dissensions spring up, all which are the works of the flesh.(Hugh of St. Victor, Explanation, p.4)

As Christ’s Church we must seek to learn, in humility, what it means to work towards other people’s flourishing. Mutual Flourishing will never work when the focus is to ensure our own flourishing but rather when we begin to sacrifice our own flourishing for the sake of someone else’s. My most powerful relationships are the ones forged in the crucible of radical, risky self-denial when we dared to decide to outdo each other in love and honour and thus dismiss our own compulsion to look after ourselves first. It is when we have served one another, not looking for our own needs to be met but to meet the needs of the other, that our needs do indeed get met and, often, I have found that my perceived needs were not needs at all but wants. It is in this mutuality of love that I have found peace in being gifted the care and wisdom of others over my limited understanding of my own requirements.

This unity of mind and heart, for Augustine, repeatedly is stated as being ‘in God’ for it is in true relationship with him that we have access to the eternal unity of his very being. It is in the way the Trinity interact with one another that we are to be shaped. Perfect love is modelled in the self giving of each person to the other. Each receives honour from the others and, in their difference, unity in love is outpoured.

This is the kind of love that the world so desperately needs to see and know. It begins, not with those other Christians understanding and growing in love, but me. The judgement which I pass on those mistaken Christians who selfishly push their own will on to others, demanding to be heard and to have an impact, must be turned and used to remove the log of pride which blinds me. I must set my will on seeking the growth and flourishing of my brothers and sisters and trust that the Lord will honour my attempts at love and surround me with a mutually loving community. This community must, therefore, be intentional at sharing this single-minded will to be formed into the likeness of Christ, the image of God, Trinity in unity. Without this unity as the epitome of life the rest is useless.

Since the Psalm says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant is it, that brethren should dwell together in one”, why then should we not call Monks so? For Monos is one. Not one in any manner, for a man in a crowd is one, but though he can be called one along with others, he cannot be Monos, that is, alone, for Monos means one alone. They then who thus live together as to make one man, so that they really possess what is written, “one mind and one heart”, Acts 4:32 many bodies, but not many minds; many bodies, but not many hearts; can rightly be called Monos, that is, one alone (St. Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 133,v)

Monasticize the World


I read a quote recently which struck at the heart of my thinking and its implications for the Church and the world.

There was a common concern at the time, and especially in the period from 1100 to 1160, with the nature of religious life and the ideal of personal perfection. A set of values as well as a way of life, embodied in various institutions, was at the heart of the movement of reform, which can be seen as an effort to monasticize first the clergy, by imposing on them a standard of life previously reserved for monks, and then the entire world (Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p.6)

I found the quote in a book on the theology of Hugh of St. Victor who was a canon regular in Paris during the twelfth century renaissance. Canon Regulars are priests who live together and follow a common rule and share their property in common. Most, but not all, follow the Rule of St Augustine written during the fourth century over 100 years prior to the Rule of St. Benedict. Carolyn Bynum, in her article on the spirituality of the Canon Regulars saw these priests falling between the clerical reforms of Pope Gregory VII and the Cistercian reforms of monasticism taking place at the same time. This movement saw a shift away from the monastic ideals of shared property and common life to embrace a more pastoral and evangelical ideal. Bynum distinguishes three characteristics of the canonical movement:

  1. a conviction that contemplative action is superior to the purely contemplative life.
  2. an emphasis on preaching.
  3. a renewed emphasis on sacraments and history.

Hugh of St. Victor is a fascinating writer whose work centres on the theme of reformation, both personal and ecclesiastical. Again and again he writes on our need to seek God’s restoration of our nature from the fallen state that we find ourselves and to allow God to build within us a dwelling place for Himself. For Hugh this was an ordered and systematic work of prayer, study and active service. In his time the Church needed a total structural overhaul and Hugh saw this starting with a disciplined life of learning and teaching within the Church. Discipleship was an ordered way of life aimed at creating people who participated in the wisdom of God.

I am an ordained priest in the Church of England serving in a parish with a history with The Company of Mission Priests. This is important as this parish has a history of ‘monasticized’ clergy who took the service of those suffering in poverty seriously. I have been asking myself what it might look like to return to that form of ministry. I have been exploring and studying the New Monastic movement for many years, with a particular interest in the historic examples of how the monastic tradition has led the Church through renewal and reform in the past. I have a deep sense of vocation to a form of monastic life but, being married, I am limited in the way I can engage in this vocation through traditional paths. I have explored tertiary and oblate schemes as well as dispersed new monastic communities but it is the sharing of common life that is at the heart of my calling. A deeply sacramental model of parish ministry and a commitment to a social gospel, particularly in areas of deprivation, is emotionally demanding. I often feel alone in the pressures of living with such immediate and unavoidable pain and suffering. I have been praying for a community to share with me in this radical and sacrificial ministry. I am not alone, either. I have a few ordained friends who are crying out for a life of living and working alongside others, sharing the joys and struggles of ministry among the most needy in our society.

I also have a particular focus on reformation and restoration within my ministry. At this time of ‘Renewal and Reform’ I often ask myself how much are we genuinely seeking to listen to the monastic tradition as our forebears did (often after a struggle!) Hugh of St Victor’s methodical approach to the construction of an inner Ark to house the presence of God and to his commitment to the monasticizing of the clergy and, indeed, the world strikes me as deeply important and relevant to our urgent need at this time.

Whilst I served my curacy I reflected on the Rule of St. Benedict, asking myself what it might look like to live out a Benedictine life in the parish context. Many people found these reflections helpful and interesting but by the end of the project I was more convinced of my monastic vocation and, therefore, more grieved by the lack of community to share my life with. Having now moved to a new context and started a new ministry, I am returning to those deep questions of what it is God is calling me to. My journey in Parish Monasticism? was a personal one, asking questions of the individual things I could do to engage in this monastic spirituality. I am now asking more structural questions and the increased urgency for reformation causes me to think beyond the personal and seek to challenge the Church wider to take seriously the fading ‘fad’ of new monasticism.

Renewal and Reform are not new to the Church of Christ. We would be foolish to miss out on Hugh of St. Victor’s extensive writing on the subject. I want to start to explore this theme using the Rule of St. Augustine which he lived under and used to shape his life and of which he wrote an excellent commentary/explanation on. The Rule of St. Augustine is small treatise on the life within community but it is, compared to St Benedict’s later Rule, relatively bare on details. Augustine rather uses it to flesh out his major theological themes in lived relationships. Hugh and Augustine share many ideas and concepts; they share a love of urban environments, a distress at the fallenness of humanity and an appreciation for the beauty of order. I hope to sit with them both and listen to what they teach. As I learn from them I hope to pass on the wisdom and thus embrace a more canonical approach. Bynum observed,

Canonical authors see canons as teachers and learners whereas monastic authors see monks only as learners. (Carolyn Walker Bynum, “The Spirituality of Regular Canons in the Twelfth Century”, Jesus as Mother: studies in the spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) p.36)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. I pick up the Rule of St Augustine this time and, rather than ask ‘Parish Monasticism?’, proclaim ‘Monasticize the World’. I do hope you will join me.

 

On Discipleship Within The Monastic Tradition

This is the text of a paper presented at the first Postgraduate Research Morning hosted at St Hild’s College in Sheffield on Monday 5th June 2017.

 

I want to talk about discipleship today from within, what many are calling, ‘the New Monastic Movement’ of which I am part. This movement has emerged out of a protest against the steady increase of individualism prevalent in our Western culture. Many would argue that the individualisation of our society began in the Enlightenment with philosophical thought becoming more introspective and focussed on the subjective interpretation of reality famously summarised in René Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am.” The Church has not been immune to this social deconstruction and this has led to a powerfully individualised faith experience. This erosion of the corporate understanding of faith has impacted the Church’s discipleship and life together.

With the secularisation following on from the Enlightenment project and the further mechanising and fragmenting of all aspects of our lives, the place of community has diminished. In the late 20th century, with the Church increasingly  unwilling or unable to offer intensive forms of Christian discipleship, some have gathered together to re-discover what it means to live out the communal life as described in the New Testament. The faithfulness of the monastic and mendicant saints throughout history became wells around which these small groups were nourished, inspiring them to live counter-culturally. These ‘pioneers’ discovered that the shared life they dreamt of had long been practiced by communities like the Franciscans, Benedictines and the Jesuits, among many. Others arrived at a similar place by a different route, having sought, in the first place, to rediscover the spiritual fortitude and charisms of the very same saints of old and so to re-dig wells of Grace in the ‘places’ where God has worked for generations before. Regardless of the path towards a contemporary articulation of the monastic way of life, they all learned that the historic forms were in need of some re-imagining for the new context in which we now live. In this way these expressions of communal discipleship can all be reasonably described as ‘new monastics’.

The term ‘New Monasticism’ was first used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a letter he wrote on 14th January 1935. This is what he said,

the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.  I think it is time to gather people together to do this. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.424)

Two years later, Bonhoeffer published ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ in which he seems to expand on his view of classic monasticism. He writes,

The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost…. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness.  It was decisive that monasticism did not separate from the church and that the church had the good sense to tolerate monasticism. Here, on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved…. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p.46-47)

This ‘toleration’ of monasticism by the Church, however, relativized the discipleship lived out in the monastic houses. The Church was able to avoid the criticism of secularisation by living the life of holiness vicariously through the achievements of these monks who obeyed the radical call to forsake all earthly things and follow Jesus Christ in discipleship.

Bonhoeffer argues that Martin Luther’s journey through the monastic life led him to see how the monastic life had failed the Church by perpetuating this lie that Christians could pay others to be ‘disciples’ on their behalf. The monastic houses had become, by the time the Reformation began, propped up by the financial donations by the Roman Church paying a select few monks to be obedient for the rest of God’s Church. Luther’s protest was an attempt to release the radical  obedience to follow Christ, found in the charisms of monastic life, and invite all Christians to participate in this form of devoted life of monasticism.

I say all this, yes, in order to justify the New Monastic movement as a continued protest for the Church to embrace the way of life outlined in the founding documents of the Benedictines, Franciscans, Jesuits and others. But I also say it in order to acknowledge and outline the popular portrayal of monastic life and the criticisms that it therefore receives. I want to argue that it is the early monastic life, articulated most purely in the Rule of St Benedict, that holds the key for us todayas to how to live as ‘a living protest against the seculariztion of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.’

Listen, my son, and with your heart hear the principles of your Master. Readily accept and faithfully follow the advice of a loving Father, so that through the labour of obedience you may return to Him from whom you have withdrawn because of the laziness of disobedience. My words are meant for you whoever you are, who laying aside your own will, take up the all-powerful and righteous arms of obedience to fight under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ. (RB Pro:1-5)

Thus starts the Rule of St Benedict. It begins with an unswerving command to obedience, not a popular command in our individualised, self-autonomous culture but the monastic life centres on the vow to stability, obedience and conversion of life. Columba Cary-Elwes helpful highlights that ‘the very word obedience has a treasure hidden in its history.’ She writes,

If you unpack it, ob audiere, to listen intently is the language of love. When you really love, you listen intently to know what the one you love wants to happen. (Columba Cary-Elwes, Work and Prayer:the rule of St. Benedict for lay people (London:Burns & Oates, 1992) p.182)

This understanding of obedience is acceptable in the context of our personal relationship with Christ but it becomes problematic for many in our post modern, subjective culture. To love and obey another is seen by our self-autonomous society as oppressive and open to all manner of abuse. In outlining the role of the abbot in his Rule, St Benedict, on more than one occasion, however, quotes Christ, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me.” Christ imparts authority to his disciples in order that they may speak on his behalf to others. The abbot in the monastic community is to represent Christ to his monks. The risk of abuse to that kind of power is real and Cary-Elwes acknowledges as much when she states,

No doubt also an abbot can go beyond his rights, and what is wrong or evil should not be obeyed. Yet all that happens is under divine providence and God’s wise guidance of the world, and this includes commands of superiors. (Cary-Elwes, Work and Prayer, p.40)

St Benedict spends many chapters portraying what an abbot should and should not do; he spends so much time that it begs the question, “why is it so important?” It is important because the role of the abbot directly impacts the discipleship of the rest of the community. ‘The first thing that defines the abbot,’ Esther de Waal writes, ‘is not the position at the head of an institution but his relationship with sons’ She links this with the model of discipleship undertaken by monks.

The learning process is more analogous to that of apprenticeship by which one person learns a skill from another. In the ancient world skills were handed down from father to son, and so apprenticeship also carries with it the implication of a father-son relationship. It involves imitation and long, patient watching and copying, a shared learning that owes much to the fact of daily living together.(Esther de Waal, Seeking God: the way of St. Benedict (London: Fount, 1985) p.130)

Discipleship, within the monastic tradition, begins with obedience; to listen intently to God through His Spirit and His people under authority. Rowan Williams paints a beautiful image of this model of discipleship as he suggest that being a disciple ‘is a state of being in which you are looking and listening without interruption.’

You are hanging around; you are watching; you are absorbing a way of being that you are starting to share. You learn by sharing life; you learn by looking and listening. (Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: essentials of the Christian life (London: SPCK, 2016) p.3)

‘Obedience is not an imposed subservience to an external authority but a condition of inward growth,’ as Dominc Milroy writes,

The monk who is not authentically obedient to his abbot and his brethren will not be a happy monk; the carpenter who is not obedient to the laws of governing joints will make an unreliable table. All disobedience represents, in this sense, the pursuit of illusory freedom which obstructs the acquisition of real freedom. (Dominic Milroy, “Education According to The Rule of St. Benedict”, Ampleforth Journal, no.84 (Autumn 1979) p.4)

As well as obedience, discipleship, within the monastic tradition, also begins with stability. Brian C Taylor says,

The Benedictine vow of stability is a vow to a community of people… In this sense it is a marriage…The grass is not greener “over there”: one must work out one’s problems with this person because, if one doesn’t, one will have to work it out with that person. This is precisely what is so freeing about the vow of stability, both in monastic life and family life. To have to work it out is to demand growth, as painful as it is, and that is freeing. Faithfulness is a limit that forces us to stop running and encounter God, self, and other right now, right here. (Brian C. Taylor, Spirituality For Everyday Living: an adaptation of the rule of St. Benedict (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1989) p.17)

Or to put that more succinctly, Meister Eckhart wrote: ‘The meaning of stability: God is not elsewhere.’

If obedience is about listening intently, then stability aids our silencing of unnecessary distractions ‘for stability says there must be no evasion.’ There must be no escaping into a fantasy world or the day dreams of how we’d do great things if only… ‘At the heart of stability,’ Metropolitan Anthony bloom suggests, ‘is the certitude that God is everywhere, that we have no need to seek God elsewhere, that if I can’t find God here I shan’t find Him anywhere.’

Both obedience and stability combine with the commitment to seek out the conversion of our lives and gives the framework within which discipleship occurs in the monastic tradition. Conversion of life is about life-long, inner transformation which ensures discipleship is not a course to complete but a way of life to journey deeper into. Thomas Merton argues that a commitment to total inner transformation is to be regarded as ‘the end of the monastic life, and that no matter where one attempts to do this, that remains the essential thing.’

The Rule of St Benedict is immensely practical and pragmatic and can be used as a manual for a devoted life to following Christ. What we need to learn from it and the wider monastic heritage is the communal necessity of this way of life. Discipleship for Benedict, Francis and the other monastic fathers and mothers can only be done with others. Love can only be practised in the cut and thrust of community life. If the vows to stability, obedience and the ongoing conversion of one’s life can be seen as the soil in which monastic discipleship is rooted and from this the tree of discipleship can bear good fruit then we must acknowledge that all three require other people to be faithful and obedient to and to be changed by.

The monastic tradition has always rejected a form of life that attempts to replicate the religious life outside of a communal setting. John Cassian describes a type of monk called Sarabaites in a derogatory manner,

They… go on living in their homes just as before, carrying on the same work; or they build cells for themselves, call them ‘monasteries’ and live in them as they please… Shirking the austere rule of a community: living two or three together in a cell; under no direction: aiming above all else at having freedom from the elders, of going where they like, and of satisfying whatever passion they like. (John Cassian, The Conferences of Cassian, “Conference 18: Conference of Abba Piamun on the three sorts of monks”, Owen Chadwick (trans.), Library of Christian Classics Volume XII: Western Asceticism (London: SCM Press, 1958) p.268-269)

St Benedict also depicts this type of monk as,

…unschooled by any rule, untested, as gold is by fire, but soft as lead, living in and of the world… They live together in twos or threes, more often alone, without a shepherd in their own fold, not the Lord’s. Their only law is the pleasure of their desires, and whatever they wish or choose they call holy. They consider whatever they dislike unlawful. (RB 1:7-9)

The monastic life, I would argue, is still ‘a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.’ But in our modern context this requires us embracing the challenge of community life as outlined in the Rule of St Benedict. In this portrayal of community life discipleship is intrinsically linked with the submission of our self wills to the discipline of the larger community’s apprenticeship training. This is not the romantic, sentimental community life that we all easily describe in our dreams of missional communities but a very real and costly life which demands obedience and stability in order to enter into the inner change of discipleship.

Without this ultimate commitment to the other monks, to wife or husband, to child or parent, change is difficult at best because it lives under the threat of abandonment. With a commitment to stability, change is no longer a threat but something to be undertaken together. One can change or ask for change in the other when one knows that one is loved and that this request will not drive the other away.

What the monastic tradition offers the Church today is a communal way of life that challenges our cultures hyper-individualism by demanding the sacrificing of the idol of self and ‘a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.’ We must discover that on the boundary of the Church today the monastics still preserve ‘the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship.’

Chapter 73: all perfection is not herein attained

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For what page or word of the Bible is not a perfect rule for temporal life?

Isn’t this just about being a Christian?

I sat amongst the emerging community holding the proposed Rule of Life for the possible Society of the Holy Trinity, a New Monastic Society aimed at bringing together communities across the UK (and hopefully further afield) under a common rule and constitution. As we read the prologue to this Rule and reflected on what it said, there was an obvious thing to say,

Isn’t this just about being a Christian?

I had sat with Ian Mobsby, Gareth Powell and others for three days a month before and shared the stories of our different communities as they grew and developed. The Rule of Life, mainly written by one of the communities, had spoken to the other communities represented around the table. In our discussions we were clear that we needed this Rule to be a broad umbrella so that communities from across the Anglican communion may gather under it but it couldn’t be so broad as to lose any definition.

In a paper I was asked to write for the upcoming New Monastic Conference, entitled ‘An Understanding Of Religious Life Based On “New Monasticism: new forms of missional & religious life in the 21st century”’, I attempted to articulate what the New Monastic movement understands by a ‘Rule of Life’.

A Rule of Life is fundamental to the identification with the New Monastic movement. A Rule of Life is not just an agreed statement of belief or purpose but a set of commitments which are formally accepted by way of promises/vows. For all Christians, for every community, every monastery, every intentional grouping, the Gospel is the Rule of our life, the measure of our faithfulness to Christ. In this sense, no other rule is necessary. The tradition of the monastic Rule evolved as the deposit of the Gospel for a particular group at a particular time. Thus intentional communities need to be clear about the way in which they respond to the call of the Gospel. There are many possible ways: a community may feel called to follow a classic Rule; another may have felt called to write a Rule that is, for the members, their invitation to the Gospel life; another may have evolved a covenant document that identifies certain key practices that hold the members in their common vocation. (Ned Lunn, ‘An Understanding Of Religious Life Based On “New Monasticism: new forms of missional & religious life in the 21st century”’, Position Paper for ‘New Monasticism: a UK gathering of new forms of missional and religious life’, 14th April 2016)

With this understanding it is a natural response when reading any Rule of Life to say, ‘but that’s just being a Christian’ but the reality is many Christians struggle to specifically embody the gospel in their lives. The life of faith demands to live and move within context. The Spirit of God does not calls us to live anywhere but calls us to live in the time and place we find ourselves. Jesus lived in history, at a particular time and in a particular culture.

One of the ways in which the Society of the Holy Trinity distinguishes our specific vocation is to acknowledge that we are all communities living in urban contexts. This is not to say that we refuse to engage in the gospel elsewhere but the reality is we experience the life of faith is in the city environment. God has called us to live out the gospel in the City and so we have different questions to ask and a unique perspective on God’s vision for the new creation from communities who exist in the countryside.

I was initially uncomfortable with limiting the Rule of Life of the Society of the Holy Trinity to urban life but God showed me his specific call to bless the city. Living in a context requires us to continually return to the specific questions God asks of us and we must ask of each other. ‘How then shall we live here and now?’ It is easy to lose focus and to shift it from one thing and then to another; a Rule of Life forces us to sit with questions longer than we would naturally.

The Early Church wrestled with the question of context. St Paul argued pragmatically that Christians living in the Hellenistic cities of the Roman Empire as slaves and wives of Greeks or Romans did not have the luxury to distance themselves from the company of Gentiles as the Jewish Christians would want. It was easier for new Christian converts to live the Jewish life in Jerusalem but it was not practical or reasonable to ask those elsewhere to live to that standard. The Early Church discovered the need for some contextual common sense in the discipleship of new Christians.

The danger of context, however, is that we err too far the other way and use the charge of ‘context’ to encourage individualism. There is a risk that by adopting the ‘that’s alright for you but I am different’ subjective approach to life that we are never challenged by the cost of discipleship. There are some who are exploring New Monasticism who feel they can tailor make their own Rule of Life so that it works for their life as it is. When this Rule of Life starts to cost something of our life and comfort, they re-assess and change it to suit new priorities, etc. This makes me feel particularly uncomfortable. A Rule of Life must be shared with others to ensure that iron sharpens iron. That is why, even though there are some parts of the proposed Rule of Life of the Society of the Holy Trinity that I am not keen on, I’m happy to sit with it and would love, in the future, to vow to live by it.

A Rule of Life, like the Bible, demands of us to wrestle with the text and seek to hear God reveal himself through the tangible words. A Rule of Life is a lens we use to help us to hear and understand God’s life-giving story as it calls us to participate in it and it is a lens which we need to share with others to ensure we don’t impose our own agenda and distorted ideas onto it. A Rule of Life must not become an idol, formed into our image, but rather must point us to the revelations of God’s love and grace towards us and the world around us.

Esther de Waal, who I have enjoyed journeying with through the Rule of St. Benedict, puts it beautifully at the end of her book ‘A Life Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict’,

The rule of Benedict is a way of life, a life-giving way. To encounter the text in all its fullness and complexity is like a source and stream, always the same and yet always different, or like a tapestry where I follow first one thread and then another and so get different glimpses of the whole. I return to it time and time again throughout my life. Benedict and his practical manual of the love of Christ are always there to help me on my journey, the coming home of the prodigal to the loving embrace of the father. (Esther de Waal, A Life Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict (New York: Continuum, 1995) p.215)

Reflection

Christianity is not a spirituality because it forces us to embrace our humanness; the fleshy, tangible life. We are not dualists, yearning for the separation of our souls from our bodies. We are not a people focussed on some spiritual nirvana achieved by asceticism or prayerful meditation in the hope of transcending our flesh. We are bodily present, rooted in history and geography, in the world we see, hear and breathe in.

The gospel is about the redemption of the world not an escape route from it. Rowan Williams writes,

The only history to be taken seriously is bodily history; and so the redemption of humanity must be located in bodily history. (Rowan Williams, The Wound Of Knowledge (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990) p.28)

The beautiful revelation of God through Jesus Christ is that God cares for this world and his eschatological plan is bound up in the atoms and particles of creation. The incarnation is good news for us that our earthly lives are not accidental but have a divine purpose: redemption.

The parish system should help us to remember the particularities of our life. Where we live is important. Our neighbours lives demand our attention. The communities of which we are a part are not distractions but the priority of our God who walks that landscape seeking out the lost and proclaiming another world is possible. We can easily forget these truths and realities and that is why a Rule of Life is helpful to hold us in that place of asking the question, ‘how then shall we live?’ How do we live out the gospel in this place at this time? It will be different from those in different contexts but the challenge is, as it has been since the early Christians first discovered God’s vocation given to them by the Holy Spirit at their baptisms, how do we remain united in the demands of different contexts?

Almighty God, through your Holy Spirit you created unity in the midst of diversity;
We acknowledge that human diversity is an expression of your manifold love for your creation;
We confess that in our brokenness as human beings we turn diversity into a source of alienation, injustice, oppression, and wounding. Empower us to recognize and celebrate differences as your great gift to the human family. Enable us to be the architects of understanding, of respect and love; Through the Lord, the ground of all unity, we pray. (“Prayers for Diversity”, Jesuit Resources, http://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/online-resources/Prayers-for-Diversity.cfm)

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 72: the good zeal monks should possess

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Monks should practice this zeal with ardent love…

What has happened to the UK?

We live in interesting times!

On the Sunday morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union the lectionary epistle reading was Galatians 5:1, 13-25.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery…For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy; these were the words being used as the ripples of the UK’s decision were felt by all of us. Both major political parties went into melt down as David Cameron resigned triggering a leadership race and then the Labour party followed suit with several resignations and a leadership coup. Scotland began rethinking their independence which, strangely UKIP are dead against because they feel Scotland is better in a union than out… No one seemed totally comfortable with the way things were turning out. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s announcement was downbeat to say the least. The political jostling had begun!

Throughout the debate it was clear that what the voting public needed were facts, but who do we trust to give us the facts? As Michael Gove interestingly stated,

I think the people in this country have had enough of experts.

Although we needed facts what we wanted was ‘passion’. The ‘Trump Effect’ (which is sadly now a well known phrase!) is the replacement of intellectual reason with courage in conviction.

They aren’t afraid to say it as it is.

They are passionate about their beliefs.

Nigel Farage, the main force behind the referendum, has now resigned having achieved what he wanted in politics. He worked tirelessly to achieve his aim and ambition with great zeal but at what cost? To be more specific; in what manner? For me passion and zeal, unbridled by reason, faithfulness or stability leads to division. This is what is being outlined in the Galatians passage above.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

When you sow in division, you reap in division.

I want to be clear that, despite my vote to remain in the EU, my concern and disappointment is rooted not in the outcome of the vote itself but in the nature that the debate was done and the precedent it has set for the future of our society. As always my judgement on the morality of a decision is based not on the decision itself but on the process and means by which the decision was arrived at. If the vote had gone the other way, I’d have still been upset and uncomfortable about the decision (albeit less intensely).

I have, as regular readers of this blog will know, for a long time been criticising the direction of our society in the UK over the last few decades. At the heart of my criticism and concern is the liberal, individualised approach to politics which places the individual desires and passions at the heart of all conversation. What matters most in debates is not reason but what a person thinks and feels. The subjective voice is unassailable and if someone’s beliefs are criticised then the opponent is labelled ‘intolerant’. Opinion is held higher than than fact or truth because there is no longer any objective truth. It comes down to what we ‘reckon’. This leads to us ensuring we get what we want but never paying the cost to get what we need.

What was obvious throughout the debate and in the aftermath of the referendum was that we the voters, en masse, didn’t know what we were doing. We were not told all the information we were fed lies from both sides and as the reality hit we were all as confused as before. We talk about the value and success of democracy but what the referendum did show me was that democracy doesn’t work because it relies on the generally uninformed voter making a decision which inevitably goes to the person who is charismatic and not for the one who is able to make the change to society that most of us don’t know we need. The referendum was won, not by truth but by personality.

Plato, in his book ‘Republic’, depicts democracy as a denigration of strong governance and places the democratic regime just above tyranny. The democratic man, which he uses to portray the character of democracy, is a man who is free to do what they want and live how they want. This democratic man is ruled by his passions and base desires. He is uneducated with little self control. Democracy is painted as self-autonomous units fighting and competing to survive… sounds like the UK at the moment!

When reading Galatians a day after the referendum it was this depiction of democracy that came to mind as I prepared to preach into a society where the political, economic and social stability of our nation was in chaos. Markets were uncertain. Communities were divided and a rise in xenophobia and racism became prevalent. Families were divided deeply and there was no sign of any leadership. This is the fruit of living life by our flesh, our passions.

The alternative, Paul argues, is to die to the flesh.

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

The referendum was also a debate about identity. We, as a nation, are struggling to articulate a shared identity due to the aggressive pursuit of the individual identity in our capitalist, neo-liberal culture. There is no longer a shared narrative to our lives together. This is why the concept of family, community, fellowship is eroded and there is such high levels of loneliness, mental health issues, depression, anxiety and violence; and it is that one word which describes the debate and the fruit of the vote to leave, on both sides: ‘violence’.

Violence is rooted in fear. Violence is the response when we feel threatened. Violence is characterised by the cross. So what should our response be? How then do we live?

Love.

This is not the love that allows people to live how they want but the love which desires that people belong and are brought together. This love is not just allowing others to exist nearby but a desire for transformation and growth. This love is rooted in the monastic vow of stability, obedience and ongoing transformation. Esther de Waal writes,

Genuine love is free from exploitation or the manipulation of others. Where this is missing love becomes a delusion, a subterfuge, a means to an end. The patience and gentleness of verse 5 are again virtues which Benedict admires and which he has been encouraging. This is the opposite of that violence which is not limited to aggressive behaviour but may be a reflection of the hidden violence of feelings which comes out in tone of voice or the glance… The ‘wicked zeal of bitterness’ must refer to the rivalries and power games that can tear communities apart, the sort of competition that is unsuitable in the body of Christ. If you must compete, he seems to say, at least compete in love! (Esther de Waal, A Life Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (London: Continuum, 1995) p.211)

Paul contrasts the life lived by the passions of the flesh as a life guided by God’s Spirit.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

To live by the Spirit one must die to the flesh. This is what is being outlined by St. Benedict in this penultimate chapter of his Rule.

Let them, “in honour prevent one another” (Rom 12:10). Let them accept each other’s frailties (of body and soul). Let them try to outdo each other in obedience. Let no one do what is best for himself, but rather what is best for another. Let them expend the charity of brotherhood in chaste love.

I’m a passionate person; I feel things powerfully and I have strong convictions but I know I must learn to control and master that passion by deliberately and intentionally dying to self and being drawn into the community of love and respect. I must establish my identity in Christ and allow him to form me in his likeness.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.(Phil 2:3-8)

Reflection

…salvation is not an individual project, but one we undertake with and among our brothers and sisters in Christ. We work out our salvation not only in fear and trembling, but also in community. It is in our care for, and interaction with, one another that we become the body of Christ, now and forever. (Norvene Vest, Preferring Christ: a devotional commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 1990) p.267)

Now, more than ever, the UK needs to be re-trained in living with others. There was a great cry, after the vote on the UK membership in the EU, to come together and be united. It sounded so simple but we have lost the art of doing that. Living with others is a cost to our personal sense of freedom. We have heard a lot about freedom and our own sovereignty over the referendum debate but I repeat Paul’s words to the Galatians,

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.

It is the paradox of the Christian life that we have been given freedom to choose to become slaves to one another in Christ. Community is not easy and so the need for guidelines is so important. The Rule of St. Benedict is the greatest example of such guidelines which hold people together when every passion and zeal is telling them to flee or worse do violence in thought, word or deed. A Rule of life must cover every aspect of one’s life; the thoughts (orthodoxy), the feelings (orthopathy) and the actions (orthopraxis). It must be shared with those you live with in order that everyone exists within the same narrative because with no shared story there is no shared values, direction, destination and ultimately no shared character/identity.

We have voted to leave the EU to regain our own sovereignty so how do we now build a common life together? On this issue there remains silence or rather there remains a competition for ideological power or individualised tolerance. The Kingdom of God is established when we allow our political ideology, our self-identity, our sexuality, our gender, our class, our weatlh or status to become secondary to the identity which brings joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I appreciate that may be interpreted as another subjective option of many in this pluralistic society but, as a Christian, I can see no other option offering such hope.

How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the Gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it…. Its character is given to it, when it is true to its nature, not by the characters of its members but by his character. Insofar as it is true to its calling, it becomes the place where men and women and children find that the gospel gives them the framework of understanding, the “lenses” through which they are able to understand and cope with the world. (Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK, 2004) p.227)

The New Monastic movement is a fresh call from God to intentional place ourselves in the environment of community under a framework that will shape us into the character of Christ. That was the goal of St. Benedict and the other monastic fathers and mothers and it is the goal of this new wave of monastics. The sharing of a way of life challenges the individualised culture we now suffer within. We need to commit to a Rule which is not shaped by me or my desires but is shaped for me and my transformation and in which my passion and zeal will be focussed solely on seeking God’s will in our life together; redemption of my flesh to be guided by the Spirit.

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified:hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people, that in our vocation and ministry we may serve you in holiness and truth to the glory of your name. Raise up leaders of character who will lead us to inhabit your story of hope and in which all of us find our rest.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 71: the brothers ought to obey one another

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The service of obedience is to be shown to all, not just the abbot, for by this road of obedience they shall travel to find God.

Where is authority and obedience placed and how is it used?

Let prefix this post with an acknowledgement: I will be quoting Thomas Merton a lot during this one!

I have a personal struggle with authority and obedience which is deeply woven into my personality and history. Firstly, I am a born and raised Roman Catholic which has undoubtedly influenced me for good and ill in equal measure. I cannot and will not ever shake that influence from me, I can only learn to embrace the good and ask God’s mercy and grace to redeem the ill. Secondly, I am a millennial/Generation Y, my older siblings are the cynical generation X and they have shaped me as well as my peers who, like me have been parented by baby-boomers. All of that may sound like a load of sociological mumbo jumbo but the key point is I’m a product of my culture. Generation Y is also known as Generation Me, for we are, on the whole, a narcissistic bunch obsessed with selfies due to a great deal of pampering by our parents who were the recipients of Thatcher’s ‘booming economy’! These two parts of my social makeup would be enough to create a paradox around the issue of authority but there’s more specific personality traits that create a confusing cocktail of issues for me. (There’s my Generation Y traits coming out; a desperate need to be unique and noticed. Ironic!) In Myers Briggs personality test I am an INTJ

Blindly following precedents and rules without understanding them is distasteful to INTJs, and they disdain even more authority figures who blindly uphold those laws and rules without understanding their intent. Anyone who prefers the status quo for its own sake, or who values stability and safety over self-determination, is likely to clash with INTJ personality types. Whether it’s the law of the land or simple social convention, this aversion applies equally, often making life more difficult than it needs to be.(“INTJ Strengths and Weakneses”, 16 Personalities, April 23 2016, https://www.16personalities.com/intj-strengths-and-weaknesses)

I have a deepening sense of vocation to some form of monastic life. I am a self selected Anglican. I am artistic by temperament and, until ordination, by profession. All of this makes for some paradox inducing internal struggle for me but… it’s what makes me interesting!

I appreciate authority. I desire authority. I know the necessity for authority and even in a democratic country authority is not only allowed it is more needed than ever. Our relationship with authority, as a culture, is interesting to me. After it’s abuses by so many in the 20th century we have allowed the pendulum of social opinion to swing completely in the opposite direction. As my older siblings in Generation X have taken power (often in protesting movements and social activism) a large dose of cynicism towards authority and the status quo has become prevalent too. Figures of authority are routinely mocked and publicly shamed as satire has became increasingly popular so that now most comedians will have some form of pedestal kicking in their acts. I am not suggesting this is bad or unnecessary; I’m just noting it as interesting.

Thomas Merton (here it comes!) wrote to a Marie Byles, a scholar in Japanese religions, on January 9 1967,

You ask about the Catholic idea of holy obedience. What you are really interested in is evidently the ancient ascetic idea of obedience which goes back to the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount, and so on, is exemplified by the saints, and is analogous to the perfect obedience, docility, and so forth found in other religious ideals. The idea is fundamentally the same: to become free from the need to assert one’s ego, to be liberated from the desire to dominate others, to renounce selfish demands, and so on. Ultimately the idea is that if you renounce your own will you will be guided directly by God and moved by Him in everything… The real purpose of obedience is to obey God and give one’s will to Him. This idea of obedience is somewhat ambiguous in the later legalistic context that it got into, when the religious Orders got highly organized and became big impersonal structures run by bureaucracies. The ascetic idea was pressed into the service of a different kind of ideal, and “blind obedience” was stressed as an ideal since it meant the subject simply submitted to authority and became a cog in a machine. (Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: a life in letters (New York: Harper One, 2008) p. 191)

Merton draws out the first issue with obedience and authority and that is: where it is placed.

St Benedict’s original emphasis of obedience in his Rule stems from the expectation that within the monastic community there are personal relationships; monks were known to each other. An abbot knew the monks, personally and intimately. This relationship can’t always have been comfortable for either party particularly in issues of obedience. The abbot would have come from the community and could have been, at one time, a peer of the monks he now found himself in authority over. Within the intimacy of this fellowship of faith and discipleship, obedience is encouraged for it’s original purpose: to practice submission of our own will to God. I acknowledge not just my own personal need to practice this submission but my whole culture to do so.

Obedience, unfortunately, has continued to be associated with big, impersonal institutions and so is baulked at by many in Generation X and younger. Since the First World War and the abuses of the ruling classes that forced the population to fight increasingly failing battles on their behalf became apparent, cultural acceptance of authority began to erode. Throughout the last century, with the rise of fascism, communism, capitalism and many other philosophical and political ideals, humanity has developed a wariness to power and authority. Institutions have one by one shown themselves to be corrupted, or at least corruptible, and trust has been lost (the Church, the police, politicians, government processes, schools). This has been done to such an extent that we are now numbed to scandal and, strangely, we now see political elite and celebrities who are seemingly immune to such challenge.

To focus the issue a little more let me explore authority within the Church of England. I, as an ordained minister, have made an oath of canonical obedience,

I, A B, do swear by Almighty God that I will pay true and canonical obedience to the Lord Bishop of C and his successors in all things lawful and honest: So help me God. (Canon C14, Canons of the Church of England 7th Edition: Full Edition with First Supplement (London, church House Publishing, 2015)

In my case I have sworn obedience to the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu which has, on occasions, been put to the test. There have been decisions that the Archbishop has made which have affected me directly and which I have not agreed with. I have accepted those decisions as an act of obedience to him. This acceptance has not been easy at times as I struggle to obey authority solely because some person of status tells me to and particularly when I don’t believe them to possess all the necessary information of understanding, but I obeyed. My struggle is particularly painful when I am asked to obey decisions that have been made without any form of dialogue or relationship. Merton goes on,

As long as the notion of obedience is implicated in an impersonal power system it will be corrupted by the very things it is supposed to liberate us from- worldliness, selfishness, ambition, and so on… (Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: a life in letters (New York: Harper One, 2008) p. 192)

That is not purely to say that just the authority figure, whoever that might be, is corrupted by those things but those in obedience under them also. For the vow of obedience to be renewed and reformed for both parties involved I suggest we ensure it is placed back in the soil of long-term, trusting relationship. The alternative is to either blindly allow it to continue as it is and to be burdened by the struggle or to leave the system altogether (as many who have taken the oath of canonical obedience are doing.)

Thomas Merton, in a letter to a Wilbur H. Ferry on January 19 1967, makes the following heartfelt observation,

Authority has simply been abused too long in the Catholic Church and for many people it just becomes utterly stupid and intolerable to have to put up with the kind of jackassing around that is imposed in God’s name. It is an insult to God Himself and in the end it can only discredit all idea of authority and obedience. There comes a point where they simply forfeit the right to be listened to. On the other hand… If everyone with any sense just pulls out, then that leaves the curial boys in full command of the field with the assurance that they are martyrs to justice or something. the real problem remains the reform of the Church people who remain inside. And if there can only be a little agreement on a more reasonable and free approach, something can be done. (Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: a life in letters (New York: Harper One, 2008) p. 322)

Many have asked me why I, as a pioneer minister of sorts and as a creative artist, not only follow the rules but promote the need to stay true to them. It is the key paradox that makes me, me; how does it balance?

I have spoken before about an important moment in my life when I was asked by God to make a decision: was I going to be a revolutionary or a reformer? A revolutionary, in this instance, is one who seeks to overthrow the current system in power and replace it with something else. This revolutionary wants to destroy the status quo which is , in their mind, no longer fit for purpose, in order to create the new workable model. The reformer, on the other hand, is the one who seeks to take the treasures of the old and salvage them to allow the broken parts to either be ‘fixed’ or recycled or thrown out. The job of the reformer, in contrast to the revolutionary, is a long term systematic but thorough process. I made a promise to God some eight years ago to be a reformer and not a revolutionary.

Most pioneer ministers and those involved in the Fresh Expressions movement are revolutionaries. They are tired of the status quo failing, in their eyes, in the mission of God. The Church of England is joke and needs to be radically changed and that change is going to be made from a grassroots movements akin to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and UKIP (this is not about motivation but solely about approach.) I have promised my God that I’d commit to participate in dialogue with the tradition because I still believe God has built his Church and he has not forsaken it yet. I believe that the Church is the hope of the nation and that God is still in it working through it. Fresh Expressions of church must, in my mind grow out from and remain united to the Church of God.

The Reformation was, in my mind, an unfortunate but necessary moment in Church history. It was unfortunate because it has birthed, out of division, a divisive movement. If you sow in division you reap in division. This has meant that preference has often replaced the deeply held convictions of the reformers and we have the situation where there are so many independent churches. These church congregations are not, in themselves a problem, many are doing wonderful, anointed work and I rejoice with them in the promotion of the life of faith and mission but the ecumenical movement, despite our best intentions of being united, is not full unity. What was begun at the Reformation has created this issue.

It is from this place of commitment to change the system from within that I speak. I don’t believe in complaining about something and not learning why it is as it is and how it or I can be changed to solve the problem. It is in this reformation mindset that I struggle to balance my obedience to authority and work to discern how God is birthing the new things in and through his Church. It is in all of this that I am encouraged by Merton’s letter to Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit and one of the founders of the Catholic Peace Fellowship,

While in fact there are a lot of Superiors who think themselves infallible, and are absolutely incapable of understanding what it means to really find out what their subjects need and desire (they consult only yes-men or people who have made the grade by never rocking any boats), there is a new bunch coming up that sincerely wants to help change things, but obviously can’t do everything they would like to do either. And then there are the good Joes who want to go along wherever the Church seems to be going even if they don’t really understand what it is all about. If all these are treated as if they were purely and simply reactionary tyrants, then there will be a real mess for sure… The moment of truth will come when you will have to resist the arbitrary and reactionary use of authority in order to save the real concept of authority and obedience, in the line of renewal. This will take charismatic grace. And it is not easy to know when one is acting “charismatically” when one is surrounded with a great deal of popular support on one side and nonsensical opposition on the other… In either case let us work for the Church and for people, not for ideas and programs. (Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: a life in letters (New York: Harper One, 2008) p. 272)

Merton draws out here the other issue with authority and obedience and that is: how is it used.

The pain of authority comes when it is, as Merton calls it, “arbitrary and reactionary”. How many of us have been on the receiving end of this approach to power? Often authority is used like this when it lacks the environment of relationship but it can still manifest itself like this even when you are within long term, trusting relationships. Merton knew this personally with his own abbot at Gethsemani where he lived.

The letters and journals of Thomas Merton are full of his personal struggles with abbot James Fox who continually refused Merton the opportunity to become a hermit. these occasions are so numerous and so gradual it is hard to find just one that will sum up the pain he felt as he wrestled with obedience to an authority he no longer respected.

I know he is my Abbot, but I am very much afraid that I have never honestly been able to deal with him as with a “spiritual father” and it would be impossible for me to do so sincerely. (May 11, 1965, Thomas Merton to Jean Leclercq, ‘Survival or Prophecy?: The letters of Thomas Merton and Jean Leclercq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) p.128)

Just two years earlier, Merton expressed, in his journal, his approach to obedience to an authority he did not respect.

In consequence my attitude toward the monastery changes. They have need of me and I have need of them. As if without this obedience, and charity, my life would lack sense. It is an existential situation which god has willed for me, and it is part of His Providence – it is not to be questioned, no matter how difficult it may be. I must obey God, and this reaches out into everything… In this new condition my attitude toward the abbot is changing. Of course it is obvious that my complaints and discontent have been absurd. Though I can perhaps back them up with plausible arguments, they have no real meaning, they don’t make sense. He is what he is, and he means well, and in fact does well. He is the superior destined for me in God’s Providence, and it is absurd for me to complain. No harm will ever come to me through him – it cannot. How could I have thought otherwise?(January 15, 1963, Thomas Merton, Turning Toward the World: the journals of Thomas Merton volume four, 1960-1963 (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) p. 288-289)

Esther de Waal suggests,

…obedience is a gift rather than a matter of duty. It is something which the good monk gives with gracious charity to his brother… Obedience depends on listening so totally and openly to the other that through them we discern the face, the voice of Christ himself. (Esther de Waal, A Life Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict (London: Continuum, 1995) p. 208)

Obedience must be a gift and should be lived not out of duty but love. This becomes painful when authority is wielded over you and obedience demanded from you rather than inspired in you. It is a delicate balance that Merton lived and that we all, in some way, must navigate. Obedience, like love, must begin as a practice, a choice and through this will grow into a habit and a virtue.

The service of obedience is to be shown to all, not just the abbot, for by this road of obedience they shall travel to find God.

Philip Lawrence, OSB and abbot of Christ in the Desert, writes,

Obedience is valuable in our lives because we show one another what it means to serve and love one another. Even the abbot has to obey the brethren! (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 71: Mutual Obedience”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, April 23 2016, https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-71-mutual-obedience/)

Obedience is to be done in love and as a service and it is expected, although not explicit in the Rule, reciprocal. The person in authority over another is not to laud it over their subjects but to be obedient also. It is in this mutual obedience that authority can be wielded.

Obedience then should be preceded by a deep listening from both parties. If it is rooted in relationship then authority will be exercised with love and obedience given as a gift.

Reflection

This chapter challenges me, like the rest of the Rule, but particularly at this moment in my ministry. This current season in my life is painful like a continual dull thud causing me discomfort. I find myself blindside by a sear of the pain which I must ride out until it subsides. Through it all I choose obedience and to re-commit to following the path laid out for me by God, to see through my potentially erroneous beliefs or opinions and to say of my superior,

He is what he is, and he means well, and in fact does well. He is the superior destined for me in God’s Providence, and it is absurd for me to complain. No harm will ever come to me through him – it cannot. How could I have thought otherwise?

Having said that, I am also aware that authority and obedience is not currently rooted in relationship and it is in this way that it and I must seek to change. I must be careful though,

The moment of truth will come when you will have to resist the arbitrary and reactionary use of authority in order to save the real concept of authority and obedience, in the line of renewal. This will take charismatic grace. And it is not easy to know when one is acting “charismatically” when one is surrounded with a great deal of popular support on one side and nonsensical opposition on the other… In either case let us work for the Church and for people, not for ideas and programs.

I was asked to visit the nacent new monastic community at St Lukes, Peckham, as part of my involvement in the development of the Society of the Holy Trinity. In our discussion (which can be found here) the painful and personal issue of obedience to authority was explored. I encourage you to listen to it and pray.

I appreciate that this post has been long so I want to sum up the salient point: I believe in the Church as an institution which can develop a transformation of character by practices such as obedience. If authority and obedience is rooted in relationship and a place of intimacy they can be amazing gifts one to another. Outside of relationship they are potentially deeply damaging weapons wielded over people. The change should not be to disown them and seek replacements but to renew and replace them into their proper place.

You are the God who makes extravagant promises.
We relish your great promises of fidelity and presence and solidarity,
and we exude in them.
Only to find out, always too late,
that your promise always comes in the midst of a hard, deep call to obedience.

You are the God who calls people like us,
and the long list of mothers and fathers before us,
who trusted the promise enough to keep the call.

So we give you thanks that you are a calling God,
who calls always to dangerous new places.
We pray enough of your grace and mercy among us
that we may be among those who believe your promises
enough to respond to your call.

We pray in the one who embodied your promise
and enacted your call, even Jesus. Amen.
(Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis:Augsburg Fortress, 2003) p. 90)

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 70: no one is to presume to strike another

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We insist that no one is to strike or excommunicate a brother unless ordered by the abbot.

What is that to you?

I want to begin with a confession. I regularly dream of committing great acts of physical violence on other people. Often these people in my dream show no sign of being impacted by the punches, bites, kicks, etc. that I inflict on them. Part of the build up of violence in these dreams is that no matter how hard I attack my opponent they merely smile or continue to taunt me.

These dreams clearly reveal an inner violence within me of some sort; a form of anguish, frustration building up inside me. The figure who takes the most amount of beatings in my dream is my brother who I always associate with antagonism. He and I growing up had a typical brother relationship of competition, bullying and taunting. We are very different people with very different outlooks and approaches to life and this continues to cause (when we spend any long period of time together) a regression to childish responses in me. He has become a totem in my sub conscious for those people who seem oblivious to my frustrations and continue unchanged in their behaviour which irritate me.

I want to be clear that it has been 16 years, 3 months, 1 week and 6 days since I last punched someone in the face… it was my brother. We were sharing a room on the way up to a millennium celebration with our family and he was deliberately winding me up and we had wrestled with each other until I had pinned him down and, as usual, he taunted me, knowing that I never used physical violence. This time, however, I lost control and punched him clean in the nose… we haven’t fought since… Violence solves nothing, kids!

When St. Benedict insist on not striking someone many of us can’t imagining monks beating each other up but we must assume it must have been a common occurrence or it wouldn’t have been specified. The insistence also highlights, as Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount, that,

…if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement (Mt 5:22a)

Violence can be expressed in many forms and we ‘strike’ one another more than just physically. The same is true of excommunication.

Official excommunication is the task of the abbot only, as has been clearly defined previously in the Rule, but we can excommunicate others from our lives by choosing not to be near them or avoiding them. We are able to exist in the shallow comfort of community life if we hold onto the control of who we allow into our inner life. We look upon one others with the eyes of judgement choosing to give worth and value to one and not the other. In this way we excommunicate people from the community of our heart.

St. Benedict is insisting that we change our heart.

It is in this deeper area of our personal conversion that we must be attentive. Only with the progress through the ladder of humility and under the obedience that is required in that that we can be changed. Again we see the Benedictine vows of stability, obedience and conversion creating the dynamic, paradoxical tension in the life of discipleship.

As with the previous chapter in which the presumption of coming to the help of another monk, in striking or excommunicating another we are placing ourselves between them and God. It is God alone, through the authority of the abbot, that judgement (if it is passed at all) is made. If we presume to step in and mediate we ourselves fall short for in doing this we ultimately say to God,

We don’t trust you’ll do what we expect.

The last two chapters have reminded me of the end of the gospel of John where Jesus has re-instating Peter after his denial.

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” (Jn 21:20-22)

The sins and failings of our brothers and sisters must first be a call to our own repentance as we acknowledge that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23) Again we must place ourselves in the narrative of creation, redemption, sanctification.

Our discipleship begins with an acknowledgement that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are created beings formed from the earth by a loving and gracious Father. Our life is solely dependent on his good will and pleasure. From this point we know that we are called to live out a life of freely chosen devotion to him, a life of willing obedience. It is in following him by way of his Son that we are transformed into his likeness. He bestows himself upon those who desire conversion in the person of the Holy Spirit who continues to equip and empower us to continue the work of redemption. The Holy Spirit also makes us holy, distinct from the way of the world and marks us out as God’s own people; beloved.

If we miss out the important acknowledgement, in full force, that we are dust, nothing, sinners, then we limit our appreciation of grace within our life. A community grows and flourishes when all truly inhabit this story of our faith. If we can rightly believe the truth of this in our life and the life of each other then we are able to see Christ working out his purposes in one another.

I’ll finish with a story from the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It is said that she ‘sought out the company of those nuns whose temperaments she found hardest to bear.’ A fellow novice nun, Martha of Jesus, who spent her childhood years in various orphanages and who was described by all as emotionally unbalanced, with a violent temper, became the focus of Thérèse’s attention. It is said that the Mother Superior became concerned that Thérèse was infatuated with Martha and ordered her to stop spending so much time with her. After Thérèse’s death it was discovered that

[she] went out of her way to spend time with, and therefore to love, the people she found most repellent. It was an effective means of achieving interior poverty, a way to remove a place to rest her head. (Kathryn Harrison, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (New York: Penguin Group, 2003) p. 111)

A commitment to conversion of life relies on a rootedness in humility achieved through obedience to authority outside of ourselves. That conversion, for Thérèse of Lisieux, was about achieving interior poverty in the likeness of Christ.

Reflection

What I am about to say is not as controversial as it may first appear: conflict and tension gives a community the necessary dynamic to grow and move forward. Disagreement is not only expected within community it is necessary. Without it life together becomes, firstly, bland and also, secondly, stagnated, dare I say, dead. In the tension of polarised opinion there is a movement in thought, ideals, opinions and direction. As people wrestle with one another in disagreement we all develop and grow.

That’s why the foundational commitment to the narrative outlined above alongside a vow to chastity and stability alongside an equal vow to conversion of life creates the environment to disagree well. It won’t come as a surprise that there are members of my Christian community, locally, nationally and internationally, that I have consider punching in the face on a number of occasions (I’m sure my face has been imagined being pushed through a wall more than once!) It is a natural response to frustration and conflict but the next step is the most important in spiritual growth. Do we choose to consider how to, not necessarily physically strike them or officially excommunicate them but internally do so? What do we do with these internal temptations and thoughts? Father Maximos, in Kyriacos C. Markides book, ‘The Mountain of Silence, suggests,

We ignore them. That is what the Church fathers tell us to do. They explain that they are like flies and we are to bat them away… We can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ by His grace. (Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: a search for Orthodox spirituality (Indiana: Doubleday, 2002), quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2: farther up and farther in (London: William Collins, 2015) p.1158-9)

Community life is fraught with dangers of division and it is in the dynamic interplay of the trinitarian vows of stability/chastity, obedience and conversion/poverty and under the narrative of creation, redemption and sanctification that these issues can be a positive force rather than a destructive one.

How often in Church life do we avoid conflict because we do not know how to travel through the terrain? It is far better, I propose, that we live within the context of a life committed to the principles outlined here; that, along with the previous chapter, we are to give attention to our own growth in faith rather than take on the growth of others. It is our own conversion that we are responsible for and to allow others to sort out their own growth, trusting and praying for them as they do so. To see them through the eyes of humility, obedience and holiness.

Father Maximos also suggests that it is the practice of the Jesus Prayer that keeps ‘repetitive assaultive thoughts’ at bay.

St Mark the Ascetic said that he gave credit for his prayer life to Satan. Every time he was tempted by the devil, he prayed, thus, he prayed alot. (Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: a search for Orthodox spirituality (Indiana: Doubleday, 2002), quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2: farther up and farther in (London: William Collins, 2015) p.1159)

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

Come, Lord Jesus.