Tag Archives: honesty

Chapter 68: when a brother is asked to do the impossible

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If a brother is requested to do something difficult or impossible he should, at first, accept the command meekly and obediently.

Can we change?

Obedience.

Again.

Again I’m forced to ask the ever penetrating questions: how to respond to authority? and how to exercise authority? These two issues have oscillated throughout the Rule of St. Benedict and has raised obedience as the vow which cuts through the individualised, libertarian ethic of our age. Obedience is the virtue, the practice, I think, that challenges us most because it seems to our ‘progressive’ minds a reversal into authoritarian state which birthed both fascism and communism.

We want freedom. We want to be released from what others think of us. We want to be able to censor the oppressive demands placed upon us.

My heart knows what is good for me.

We want to be autonomous, in control, because the alternative is perceived to be unsatisfying and, at worse, abusive. We want freedom to choose because choice is the goal of our culture. We are told,

We can do anything if believe strong enough. We can achieve whatever we put our mind to. If anyone tells you can’t do it, they are wrong.

Our televisions project stories of people, ‘achieving their goals’. The contestants speak out in un-ironic parody the same statements of self belief. They’re ‘expressing themselves’ and ‘no one will stop them.’ It all sounds so positive and encouraging but under the surface lies a slightly more sinister tone of captivity.

Underneath the statements of ‘knowing self’, of finding ‘true self’ is an oppressive narrative which holds people in an identity which is unable to change;

You are who you are.

In this reality we need to discover who we are as static personalities and express it. Our gender and sexuality, our personality strengths and flaws all set in stone by a Creator who likes diversity no matter what the impact on others. Mistakes can be blamed on genetics and change of behaviours subtly denied because if we can change then we don’t know what we want or need and therefore choice becomes trickier to make.

In this consumerist narrative of free choice, we hear the call to obedience to something outside of our own choice as foreign. The truth is obedience opens our eyes to see the potential conversion of our life. It is only in obedience that we can be transformed from an old life to a new life but we must trust that which can lead us through the painful sear of true freedom into the fullness of life. All other freedom than that discovered through a commitment to obedience is false, a mirage that will blind you.

True liberation is a mystery many do not fully find because the false liberation is more appealing. The temptation makes more sense to us because we ask

why would freedom be difficult; it is the absence of pain, is it not?

True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others. (Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love (Pennsylvania: The Plough Publishing, 1988) p.40)

It is this liberation and conversion that St. Benedict calls monks to through the consecrated life. Ultimately, this life is ‘impossible’ without the faithfulness and stable love of God. It would be wrong to enter the monastic life thinking that it is achievable, it is within our capabilities. Many decide not to pursue the monastic life because they see it as impossible with their personality or who they are. The truth is: it’s not about you!

It doesn’t matter who you are, or even think you are because that, hopefully, will change; in fact, it must change if you are to live the life of discipleship and true repentance. It matters not if, when you think about the expectations the Rule places upon you, you cannot imagine yourself being able to ‘succeed’ at being a monk. It only matters if you trust that God can and will transform you from the life you live as you enter into a being ready for eternal life with him.

The superior, the authority of the abbot, is not forceful here. Again we see the gentleness needed in instructing a monk into the possibility of change. There is room, for St. Benedict, to go together, abbot and monk, as brothers into the presence of their all loving Father to seek his will. Both are equal under God and it is his will that they both must obey. Norvene Vest reflects beautifully on this approach to authority,

I resonate with the image suggested by the Latin word translated “gentleness.” The word is mansuetudine, meaning “accustomed to the hand,” and refers to training wild animals. I have a vivid sense of a small colt, standing shivering in cold and excitement as an attentive trainer approaches and gently caresses it. I often feel that way in the presence of God: fearful and shivering both with anxiety and eagerness, but willing myself to do all I can to respond, which is often simply not to run away. Instead, I tremble, and await the hand that touches me in love. (Norvene Vest, Preferring Christ: a devotional commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Pennsylvania: Morehouse Publishing, 2004) p.261)

Reflection

We as the Church must not be lured into the social narrative of consumerism and individualism. We must proclaim the truth and reality of conversion. This is not some political ‘change’ that is preached during election season. This is deep and painful change that leads to meaningful relationships of trust and hope.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted. (Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love (Pennsylvania: The Plough Publishing, 1988) p.27-28)

Our message of salvation loses all it’s potency if we collude with the morally liberal philosophies of this world or the dictatorial conservative world views which state that significant change of behaviour is not needed nor is it possible. We are all sick and distorted. We are plagued by faulty genes and personalities. We’ve all been infected and we all need healing! To heal the patient must be obedient to the process of change otherwise nothing will happen.

The church must become a place of real transformation and healing to all who come. Change must be on our banners and explicit in all we do but a change that rightly is rooted in humility (acknowledgement of the sickness) and obedience (the willingness to let go of the past and step into a new life.)

Loving Father, we submit. We submit to your gentle hand in obedience. We cannot see how we will live out the impossible but we trust that nothing is impossible for you. What we have always been can be redeemed for you, for the Kingdom, the glory and the power are yours, now and forever.

Come, Lord Jesus

Parish Monasticism: an update

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Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam; 
et non confundas me ab expectatione mea.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word, and I shall live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

I started this blog at the end of 2013 as a learning project. I had no plans of what I would learn but would journal an intentional study programme of the Rule of St Benedict. I called is ‘Parish Monasticism?’ The question mark was important as I didn’t know if such a concept would work or be helpful to frame my reflections.

Well, 1 year and 9 months later and ‘Parish Monasticism’ is a thing! Who’d have thought it. By ‘a thing’ I mean other people are using the term independent from me. I had a parish priest who met me at a training event early this year use it and ask if I had heard of the idea. I asked him where he had heard it and he told me he had been told about it by a friend and that there was a Facebook group called ‘Parish Monasticism’ (no question mark). It’s funny how things develop…

I began this blog with a hunch; a hunch and a challenge laid down by Rev. Pete Askew at the Northumbria Community during a placement I did at Nether Springs in Felton. He said to me,

It’s impossible to live the way of life we live here at Nether Springs and be a parish priest. You’d have to be very stubborn to achieve it.

I don’t know if it is my stubbornness or something else but an increasing number of parish priests and ministers are not only discovering the benefits of monastic principles to ministry but also feel a sense that God is calling them to commit to the location in an intentional, communal way with other disciples.

This is at the heart of what ‘parish monasticism’ is, I feel. What I’ve been discovering in theory and, only in some parts, in practise is a way to effectively minister and transform neighbourhoods and communities through these basic monastic principles. No, it’s more than that. Parish monasticism is about reformation of the parish system to an explicit commitment to discipleship. I’ve discovered that the lack of effective mission and evangelism is a result of faulty discipleship. As I wrote before,

If a community is not engaged in mission then their discipleship is faulty; mission is the fruit of the tree of discipleship. There is no point in just forcing a community to ‘do mission’ and expect it to work. It would be better to go back to the basics of discipleship, correcting that and the fruit of mission will grow. You judge discipleship by the mission. (Ned Lunn, ‘Chapter 49: observance of lent’, Parish Monasticism? (Jan 17th 2015))

As the Church we have lost sight, as it did in Germany before World War II, of the cost of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations and reflections on the antidote to this is what has fuelled the New Monastic movement and I think we are now beginning to discover that it must be planted within the parish system.

It must be within the parish system because there is something deeply counter-cultural for the increasingly urbanised 21st century Britain where transport is easy and more people consume worship and community rather than create/live it. Where we have no strength to withstand the temptation to make everything into our own image and just as we want it we justify or sanctify our freedom to choose where we go and what we do/allow in our lives. The parish system challenges that ego-centric part of each and everyone of us who refuses to allow something external to change our inner life.

This journey of discovery has unearthed the interconnected roots of the saints of old who speak so clearly to me; St Aidan, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Shane Claiborne to name a few. In focussing my reflections I have discovered a call deep down within me that sings of a theology rooted in Ash Wednesday and the creation story; we are made of dust, we must fully grasp humility and acknowledge we are nothing without the tender touch of our Loving Father God, humanity needs transformation and grace. From this root it grows into an acceptance of God’s mercy and love reaching out to lift us up from humble beginnings to healing and salvation as God adopts us and works on us so we can conform to His Son, the perfection of humanity, Jesus Christ. When we give ourselves totally to this process of redemption in every part of our life He seals us with His Holy Spirit to equip us for the task of heralding in His Kingdom in our lives and the lives of those around us like the first discipleship at Pentecost.

It all begins with humility.

It all demands obedience.

It all leads to community.

Parish monasticism, for me, is an emerging call to intentional, radical discipleship that seeks to convert our entire life to that of Jesus and heals us of our capitalist consumer, neoliberal culture that Stanley Hauerwas critiqued 34 years ago. Are we willing to be a stumbling block to both poles of the political and moral map found in the UK today? Parish monasticism is not about being ‘relevant’ which is banded about so much, it is about being faithful to the distinctive call to follow Christ who came to heal and healing means things change! We look at the complexities and crisis facing us on every side of our world today and we keep kidding ourselves that we know how to solve them: we don’t! We desperately want our situation to change but Jesus changes situations by changing us… and that means you and me.

Thomas Merton, who I return to whenever I reflect on our self-identity crisis in our society, continues to inform me,

The reason we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. (Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.9)

This is the root of our problem. This is where real conversion and deep discipleship works out the healing and salvation of God’s grace, mercy and love for us.

So let us humbly acknowledge our total need for change. Let us obediently follow our healer’s instruction towards salvation and let us be adopted, by grace, into his family and live in true peace with him, ourselves and with others.

Chapter 60: priests who would live in the monastery

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Should a member of the priesthood wish to enter the monastery, permission is not to be immediately granted.

What is it God is calling me to?

Having discussed general principles of vocation and commitment for the last few weeks and having spoken earlier about a potential monastic understanding of vocation, the Rule now causes me to reflect on my own personal discernment. It’s been hard reading this chapter on the acceptance of a priest into monastic orders partly because it forces me to see my sense of calling to a form of monasticism from the other side.

This week I sat in front of a panel and answered questions of vocation. I think it went well. I answered as openly and honestly as I could but there will always be a small sense of disappointment in these situations due, in part, to always being unable to discern, precisely, the will of God. Discernment, for me, is a corporate activity; it is best done within a community listening to God together. This ensures personal agendas and egos are balanced and the Spirit can confirm itself through the Body of Christ.

What is it God is calling me to?

I have been asking that question for a year and a half now. My prayers have circled round this question as I have sought God’s leading for Sarah and I post-curacy. There have been some encouraging glimpses as God uses all the vehicles of communication to show us his plans and purposes.

But…

All of those glimpses are potential and not actual. Dreaming is easy (I can do it in my sleep!) walking them out is hard. Reality is a cruel beast with a seeming will of its own not easy to tame with our desires. The stirrings of my heart are one thing but what will happen may well be quite different.

There comes a point in the journey of discernment (and I have reached it now) where one falls on the mercy of another, usually a person in authority. This is an act of trust. In vulnerability one offers the dreams, the stirrings, the private wisps of conversation between ones heart and God and ask another to decide the path to take. This is never straight forward and the person to whom you pass those cherished fragments of one’s inner life to must handle them with great care. To trust that person with such treasure is made easier when it is done in relationship.

At some point in June/July I will head to my bishop with the fruit of my wrestling with God and ask him to discern my next step.

How do I communicate what I feel God speaking to me about?

Our lives, our vocation, everything that makes up the cocktail of what makes ‘me’ me is like a tightly knotted ball of odds and ends which are so intrinsically woven to discern what to do with it takes care; a mixture of gentleness and love alongside bold and decisive cuts. It is not something to hand over easily but, sitting with it in your lap won’t help either.

Yes, I feel called to ordained ministry as a priest. Yes, I feel called to the Church of England (for whatever reason!). Yes, I feel called to married life. Yes, I feel called to sit on committees/ strategy groups, Synods, etc. Yes I feel called to the ministry of reconciliation. Yes, I feel called to the wilderness context. Yes, I feel called to serve in the ordinariness of life and, yes, I feel called to monastic life, intentional community, a contemplative rhythm of prayer and action. What does this particular concoction of callings look like in practice? How do they connect and work themselves out? I do not know… and so the ball of confusion gets passed with great trepidation to the bishop with a prayer that God’s will be done in my life.

In the Rule of St. Benedict there is a sense that the call to priesthood is to be set under the call to be a monk. That monastic call supersedes the call to priestly ministry. This, for me, makes me reflect on how I see the priestly ministry. I still find myself considering it as a function rather than an ontology (a question of being). I see myself as being a priest in that I am someone who instinctively inhabits the ‘between places’ but I increasingly feel I am a monk in that I think I am at home in the wilderness with a gathered community of other desert dwellers.

The key question for me, as I wait for the call to move,

Where then is my home?

My answer (if I am forced to be so bold) is identifying the wilderness that is all around me and building the altars there. Abraham meets God in the journey and is called to encounter him there. There are increasing number of people who feel a similar call to establishing community of intentional disciples pitching a tent and setting up a place for God’s presence to be amongst them. Will the Church recognise this move of the Spirit which seems to be birthing monastic communities within the wilds of 21st century western civilisation?

Reflection

It can feel like what I am envisaging is having my cake and eating it! This chapter has highlighted that.

You want all the pleasure of being a monk without any of the cost

The New Monastic movement is criticised on this point, I know. How is it monastic if you’re not alone? If you rarely have to face the cost of poverty and chastity how is it any form of monasticism?

I do not have an immediate answer to that but I know that we will only come to an answer by living in those questions rather than jumping to some theoretical answers. The Desert Fathers and Mothers didn’t write out a plan, a strategy, a theory; they moved into the edge lands and lived, struggled, failed and persevered.

I want to end with a picture that I have begun to own for myself; the bear.

The bear is often a solitary animal but is fiercely social as well. They live in the wild and gently plod around existing in quite extreme environments. When you bring them into a different surrounding you have to cage them because they cannot be contained. They are wild, strong and dangerous when caged or cornered. They are resilient in their natural habitats but their defence mechanisms kick in when they are out of it and God have mercy on those who are on the receiving end of their fury.

As I wait in a context I don’t feel naturally comfortable in, my prayer is simple,

Father, lead me. Meet me. Strengthen and defend me.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 59: sons of noblemen or of poor men offered to God’s service

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…if the child is under age, the parents should write out a petition as above.

What is the role of godparents?

Whilst introducing some members of our church to the Anglican baptismal theology in the hope that they may join the baptism team, I found a great oversight in our basis for preparation policy. At our church we currently invite parent(s) to come along for an evening to talk about what baptism is and to ‘help them to work out if baptism is right for them’ (to which the snowier seems to always be “yes”!) This ‘preparation evening’ is a great opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them and to encourage them to consider the life of a disciple and to answer the call to follow him. No problems so far…

Then I looked down at Canon Law B22.3 (you know the one, right!?)

The minister shall instruct the parents or guardians of an infant to be admitted to Holy Baptism that the same responsibilities rest on them as are in the service of Holy Baptism required of the godparents.

This assumes that due instruction has been given to the godparents; that the godparents are aware of their responsibilities and can,

…faithfully fulfil their responsibilities both by their care for the children committed to their charge and by the example of their own godly living.(Canon Law B23.2)

In our parish we currently only ask that the parents speak with the godparents about their responsibilities but we have no contact with godparents prior to the baptism.

I asked some other clergy to send me their baptism preparation process to see where we could develop and improve ours. Of the 6 shared with me none of them do any instructing of the godparents on their role and responsibilities and of the 5 churches where I have been aware of their preparation process none of them did either. Bearing in mind that we struggle, in my current parish, to get godparents who are baptised let alone practising Christians we are a long way off. We have long since wavered the requirement of confirmation as set out in Canon Law B23.4!

So here is my question (and it is a question): Would it be so bad to adopt a stricter policy of admission to Holy Baptism based on the requirements laid out regarding godparents?

Let’s take the idea of looking at the admission to Holy Baptism through the lens of a monastic model in a parish church. If a parish church’s baptism policy was connected into a more monastic understanding of discipleship then the approach to infant baptism could be viewed in similar terms as St. Benedict does in this chapter of his Rule. This would be no different to the theology behind infant baptism outside of a monastic understanding of discipleship with parents and godparents taking on the responsibility of making vows on behalf of the child.

In practice, the parents of a child being offered to the monastic life would need to write the petition, an unbreakable contract agreement, with the same understanding of the commitment being made if the child was of age. This would mean the same sort of rigour of instruction before an offering of the child was made. In Canon Law it states that,

No minister shall refuse or, save for the purpose of preparing or instructing the parents or guardians or godparents, delay to baptize any infant within his cure that is brought to the church to be baptized, provided that due notice has been given and the provisions relating to godparents in these Canons are observed.(Canon Law B22.4)

For every child to be baptized there shall be not fewer than three godparents, of whom at least two shall be of the same sex as the child and of whom at least one shall be of the opposite sex; save that, when three cannot conveniently be had, one godfather and godmother shall suffice. Parents may be godparents for their own children provided that the child have at least one other godparent…No person shall be admitted to be a sponsor or godparent who has not been baptized and confirmed. Nevertheless the minister shall have power to dispense with the requirement of confirmation in any case in which in his judgement need so requires.(Canon Law B23.1&4)

Now, whenever delaying baptism is discussed there are some who get uncomfortable with placing ‘hoops’ in the way. They feel that the parents will feel shunned or rejected by the church and that experience of ‘not being worthy,etc.’ will impact in their view of church in general. I understand the fear of this and can see the complex pastoral issues this raises but this is what happens when you develop such an open door policy in the first place. How do these pastoral minded objectors interpret Jesus’ challenge in Luke’s gospel,

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62)

William Barclay suggests,

It may well be that we have hurt the Church very seriously by trying to tell people that Church membership need not make so very much difference; we would be better to tell them that it must make all the difference in the world. We might have fewer people; but those we had would be totally pledged to Crist. (William Barclay,The Gospel of Luke: the daily study bible (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1961) p.133)

I had a young man contact me wanting to be baptised and so I eagerly met with him to talk about it. I asked him why he felt he wanted to get baptised and he ‘just wanted to’, his family had all ‘been done’ and he had ‘missed out’. I asked if he had any experience of God. He answered by saying that he once prayed for something and it happened. I talked about what he would have to promise if he wanted to be baptised and talked about the need for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I sent him away with homework; to read Mark’s gospel and to write down any questions or confusions about what he read. I asked him to contact me in a week and we’ll chat about what he had discovered. I also invited him to come to church and to experience worship and prayer in the context of a community of believers.

He never came to church and I still wait for him to get back in touch. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have had three previous conversations which have ended after our first meeting. All of them began with a request to be baptised. After these conversations I feel guilty that they hadn’t taken the opportunity to explore faith, I questioned whether I was putting too many barriers in the way and I beat myself up that I wasn’t able to share my faith i a way that was attractive or exciting for them.

Then I remind myself that for each of these encounters I also have stories of when I have sat with someone and share my faith with them and they now stand as faithful, practising Christians. God can and does use me sometimes!

I read the gospels and I see there Jesus asking people to follow him and many turning away and not taking him up on it. These refusals to follow Jesus don’t make Jesus change his admission policy but rather to pray and love them nonetheless. We should do the same. Keep the challenge to be a disciple but love those who feel it is too costly for them. There’s nothing wrong with being the crowd, Jesus still loved them, they just weren’t disciples with the responsibility and cost involved.

Reflection

We can all feel great pressure to make everyone we meet a Christian. The focus on mission and evangelism can be heard as a drive to increase membership in our churches but there is a distinction which needs to be heeded to stop us from selling grace too cheaply. Evangelism is not about the results. Evangelism is only about proclamation of good news; the word in greek for ‘evangelist’ means messenger, someone who speaks a message of good news. How the hearers responded was not their job, their sole purpose was to say the good news to the people. Let us not change the message so that it is favourable to the hearer. Let us instead proclaim the message faithfully and allow the hearers respond how they wish; some will hear, others won’t. Jesus knew this more than any of us.

Mission is more about establishing God’s Kingdom in our hearts and proclaiming it with our mouths and transformed lives than it is about increasing our market share. The results of mission and evangelism must remain out of our control if we are to not become manipulative or manipulated. This should not hinder the passion with which we engage in mission or evangelism we must still do it with all our heart and lives but God builds his Church. He must encounter people by his grace and he has always given humanity freedom to choose to respond or not. Allow him to take the heart ache of all those who do not listen to his voice.

Gracious Father, you came and met us in your Son, Jesus Christ, and called us to live a life as your disciples. You told us the cost and warned us of the challenge but you also showed us the glory of your resurrected life and the power of your Spirit. May we never forget reward of being in you and having you dwell within us. May we not sell that powerful experience of grace short with the people we meet.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 50: brothers who work at a distance from the oratory or are traveling

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Brothers who cannot come to the oratory at the appointed hours – because of their distance labor – should say the Divine Office where they are, kneeling in fear of God.

Who do I pray with?

Part of my personal reflections as I read the Rule of St. Benedict has been on my place within the Northumbria Community. My noviciate process has been stalled for two years now and recently I have been revisiting my future of the journey with them. I called a stop to the noviciate process due to my difficulties with the dispersed nature of the community. Despite having local groups that meet to encourage living out the Rule of Life and to have fellowship with, I have never found a group local enough. As a parish minister I feel a strong connection with my geographical location, serving and praying for the people in the area I live and work. I feel I would benefit from a community who walk the Rule of Life in that location asking the question, ‘How then shall we live… here?’

I still find the Rule of Life for the Northumbria Community enriching and challenging and I find myself returning to it and wrestling with its questions. I still say the Daily Office regularly and have settled into a sustained rhythm embedded over five years. I have made annual retreats to the Mother House over the years and contribute a relational tithe to them each month. I still feel a deep connection with the Northumbria Community and value their friendship and prayers but is the season changing now?

Part of my reflections on my relationship with the dispersed community has been the question of prayer and how it connects me into the community. Each morning, lunchtime and evening when I sit down to pray the Daily Office I feel a connection with the community, mainly those praying at the Mother House in Northumberland. I think of them often, sitting in Nether Springs, preparing meals, cleaning rooms for guests, leading workshops, pausing to say those shared words that I too am saying several miles south in my parish. It is the rhythm of prayer that connects me most; connects me into the established relationship with specific people and, in a smaller way to unknown members of the community across the world.

Over time, however, I find that I think of them less as my mind turns to my more immediate community in the parish. I now consider those who sit with me in situ regularly praying the Daily Office with me. My prayer ‘home’ is no longer up in Northumberland but here in York.

I have moved.

This is significant when considering what rhythm you pray to. I am feeling less and less of a relational connection with the people in Nether Springs (the Mother House of Northumbria Community) not because I love them any less or that I don’t desire to be with them more but because my rhythm of life has had to change. The Rule still stands as root for me to return to but the Daily Office has become less of that connection than it did. I don’t pray at the same time as my fellow journeyers up in Nether Springs due to the different work days that we have. I no longer pray for the same people as I focus my prayers on the local area with the prayers of the people around me.

Where does this leave me in my relationship with the Northumbria Community?

Many would say it doesn’t matter where you are, you engage with the community when and where you like; that’s what it means to be a dispersed community.

You’re expecting too much. It is too idealistic.

Maybe that’s true but I still have a deep call to be part of an intentional community which is rooted in the monastic tradition and part of that call, for me, is about location.

Another question I have is about the alternatives. I have yet to see God leading me to start an intentional community where I am at this point in time. I will soon be moving on from current role and it would be foolish and impractical to start anything now. I have, however, sensed there is a group of people orbiting the idea of this form of community discipleship in York and there is the potential bubbling up. What that looks like, how it would work and what Sarah and my role in that is has yet to be discerned. As my mind thinks over this possibility I think less of the Northumbria Community and more about the people who seem to share a call to intentional community in York.

Having prayed for over a year now around this subject all I can say is that I feel called to be a part of a group of disciples who live and work close to one another, who live out a life of prayer, study, dialogue and worship with one another, who have a passion for reconciliation, healing and creativity. I want to explore this with people who live close to me who can share my life as I share theirs and we share the life of Christ with the world.

Reflection

Parish life lends itself to a community at prayer in and for a specific location. Each morning and each evening I pray for my geographical area, I lift their needs and questions to God on their behalf and I am privileged to share that task with a small group of others who sit with me and support me. When I am unable to meet with them I still pray, wherever I am or they are and I do not feel alone… Of course I am not alone in prayer as thousands (if not millions) of others are praying with me at the same time, they’re just not in that room with me physically and that is where my reflections return.

Where is my physical community at prayer? Where is the community who not only say prayers with me but live out the prayers with me, who know me, know my heart, challenge me, pray for me and speak God’s word into my life?

Father, you are with me and by your Spirit you pray through me. You have called me to this place with a particular vocation and ministry. Keep me faithful to your timing and rhythm. Lead me in the way of Christ and gather round me the Body of Christ that I may play my part in it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 49: observance of lent

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A monk’s life should always be like a Lenten observance.

Why wait?

This week I have mainly been… Writing lent material for our church family.

In May this year we celebrate the fiftieth year of the church of St. Aidan in Acomb and to help us mark this occasion we have decided to spend some time reflecting on the patron saint of our church to see if there is anything we can learn from his life and work (spoiler alert: we can!)

Writing this material has been an exciting and challenging task. It is exciting because there’s such potential that this time reflecting together, through sermons and small group material, will change us as people of God; grow us as disciples of Jesus. It is challenging because that potential is reliant, in a small way, on how I construct and frame the material to encourage that growth.

Lent is a great chance to focus our attention on one aspect of our Christian life. It’s like an annual MOT for our discipleship, a fine tuning of certain places where we ‘fall short of the glory of God’. Although we must remind ourselves that it is God who grows and transforms us into the likeness of his Son, there is a small part we must play in this work. We must allow our wills to be in line with God’s. The season of preparation before the great feast of the resurrection is an intentional focussing of our attention on our obedience to God’s will.

Lent is not the excuse for not doing this kind of spiritual work throughout the year but is merely an annual focus on it. Like an MOT we shouldn’t treat this annual checkup as an excuse not to look after a car, not fill it with oil or petrol. My wife has gone through times when she doesn’t take her medicine or do her necessary exercise and then just before a doctor’s appointment has tried to catch up with herself. It is equally unhealthy to store up developing and growing in our discipleship for the forty days of Lent.

A monk’s life should always be like a Lenten observance.

During Lent, St. Benedict suggests the community,

…devote ourselves to tearful prayer, reading, contrition and abstinence.

I wonder whether ‘tearful’ is solely describing the kind of prayer we do or whether we are also to do tearful reading, tearful contrition and tearful abstinence. I don’t think it really matters but there is a sense that when we dedicate ourselves to intentional focussing on our failings it should make us tearful in all aspects of our life. I wonder if this is why we are unable to maintain a Lenten observance all year round.

The Lent material I have been writing is looking at how St. Aidan went about evangelism and mission. His approach seemed to be about establishing and sustaining a intentional community of disciples from which mission will happen. Mission, for St. Aidan, is a natural outworking of true discipleship. If a community is not engaged in mission then their discipleship is faulty; mission is the fruit of the tree of discipleship. There is no point in just forcing a community to ‘do mission’ and expect it to work. It would be better to go back to the basics of discipleship, correcting that and the fruit of mission will grow. You judge discipleship by the mission.

I have continued to be struck by the Alan Roxburgh quote about discipleship which I have used before here.

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

Here Roxburgh argues that discipleship comes out of mission but I would argue that mission comes out of discipleship as well; the one feeds the other and vice versa. This community ‘learning to ask questions of obedience’ should engage in ‘prayer, study, dialogue and worship’. These four things all lead disciples within community to engage in mission. Prayer must involve listening to the will of God and having our hearts tune into his heart and his heart is for people. Study must involve reading the Scriptures which clearly describe a God who is mission, sending his people to the world to proclaim his good news. Dialogue must involve us speaking to others as people of God about our life, lived out in relationship with God. Worship is any activity done with the intentional purpose of laying down control of our lives and allowing God to use us.

With this in mind I was struck when St. Benedict suggested that Lenten observances should be ‘tearful prayer, reading, contrition and abstinence.’ The first two clearly have a direct correlation with Roxburgh’s ethos (prayer and study). The second two actions (contrition and abstinence) may be less direct but I still see a connection with (dialogue and worship).

Contrition comes from the latin words ‘terere’ (to rub) and ‘com’ (together). Contrition is what occurs when two or more things are rubbed together. I see a connection with dialogue which requires two or more things to come together and impact each other. I’d guess that what St. Benedict had in mind, from a Roman Catholic perspective, is an engagement in the sacrament of confession where a person must face his sin with true sorrow and desire to repent. I see great worth in confessing sins in the presence of another and this form of dialogue leads me to acting out the amendments required for repentance.

Abstinence is the withholding from something, usually a great temptation for us. This is famously worked out during the season of Lent as many people give up chocolate or something that they enjoy which may be taking a focal point in their life rather than God. A disciple is encouraged to abstain from those things which are not God to move God back to the centre of our decision making. One could say that we can often worship something instead of God, idols such as money, sex, power, other humans. What we mean when we worship idols is we look to them to make decisions for us. Take a celebrity; if a person worships, say, Lady Gaga, we mean that someone allows Lady Gaga to be the model for how they live their life. If they want to make a decision as to how to act, dress, live, they must ask, “What would Lady Gaga do?”. If we say someone worships money then we mean that they’re end goal is to have more money, their thoughts are consumed with the being close to or attaining money. Abstaining from those things is a discipline because it must be an intentional rejection of a un-conscious behaviour. Abstinence is a deliberate denial of an inner desire to act in a certain way. Worship of God is always a form of abstinence because it is a deliberate action to place God at the centre of our lives and not another thing or concept.

Reflection

Any Christian community must be a centre of intentional discipleship. From this life of discipleship comes a heart for mission. The focus is not how to do mission better but how to do discipleship better. We can tell people about Jesus until the cows come home but it won’t mean anything unless we do it all in complete obedience to God under his guidance by the Holy Spirit stemming from a life of prayer and study. We must be rooted in a life solely focussed on God.

Mission has often failed because people have sought to talk about God when they have not yet talked enough to him. It must be seen that they enjoy the presence and the love of God. They must show God is real, to be met and to be enjoyed. (David Adam, ‘Aidan, Bede, Cuthbert: three inspirational saints’ (London: SPCK 2006) p.33)

In a world of binging I see some of our approaches to Lent as a spiritual binging/purging. We live the other three hundred and twenty-five days of the year living life with no deliberate focus on the work of growing as disciples and then for forty days we sprint the race. Our whole lives should be intentionally aimed at allowing God to grow us by his Holy Spirit.

Loving Father, Create in us new and contrite hearts, open to receive from you mercy and grace. Bind us together, Lord, to be lovers of your tender guidance and teaching and by the power of your Spirit complete the heavenly work of our rebirth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 46: offences in other matters

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If the cause of the sin is secret (hidden in the soul), the monk should confess to the abbot or one of the spiritual fathers.

Who can I tell?

When the Lord comes,
he will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness,
and will disclose the purposes of the heart.
Therefore in the light of Christ let us confess our sins.

This is a seasonal provision in Common Worship for an invitation to confession from the First Sunday of Advent until Christmas Eve. I’ve been saying this for four weeks as I’ve led services in different contexts. The wording is from 1 Corinthians 4:5 and is a great image of bringing everything into the light.

Darkness, after the initial shock, can be quite comforting. No one can see what you’re doing and so no one can judge your behaviour. You are alone with your thoughts and those probing eyes of others are gone; you can do whatever you like. You’re free. Darkness brings this sense of privacy where you feel in control, released from judgement.

Darkness is also scary, isolating and lonely. With no sense of sight your other senses are heightened and, those of us who are reliant on our eyes most of the time, struggle to interpret the sounds, smells and other sensations that we are now aware of.

I’ve been involved in many a party game where someone is blindfolded and asked to feel an object and guess what it is. Part of the thrill or anxiety that is created is the unknown, the unseen. What if the worst thing imaginable is placed into our hands? Not knowing what the object is means you cannot prepare yourself for the possible movement of the object or the danger that it might be. There’s a great wave of relief when you see, even if you don’t like it, what the object was. When it comes into the light there’s a fuller understanding of what it is you were dealing with.

St. Benedict has returned to discussing issues of mistakes, faults and offences in community life. We all make them, they all have an impact beyond ourselves and we should all be prepared to admit them and try and make amends. In this chapter St. Benedict reminds us again that there is no difference between what happens in the ‘sacred’ to what happens in the ‘mundane’; we are to behave in the kitchen, cellar, garden, bakery, refectory, etc. as we do in the chapel/oratory. If we make a mistake or offend God or neighbour then we should treat it as if we did it in a ‘sacred’ space such as a church building. We are to go and make a public admission in front of abbot and the community so that no one is left in the dark over such matters.

Like the previous chapter, we are encouraged to admit quickly before the issue becomes larger by deceit and covering over the fault. It is easy to try and keep mistakes private out of fear of being seen to have failed and stumbled but greater is the shame if you are found to be using the darkness to cover such mistakes. The darkness is easy to use as a tool to select what others see of you and to build the false image of yourself but this creates a kind of division within yourself of that which others know about and that which you’d rather hide from them out of fear you will be judged.

In our culture we demand that no one judges another but we do it all the time and judgement is a necessary part of growing and developing. Imagine education without anyone telling you when you get an answer right or wrong, the same is true of the development of character and behaviour. If you want to be a part of a society then you must act within the framework and worldview of that society, if you do not then you are not united in behaviour and outlook with those around you and the bonds are broken. Judgement helps us to connect with others and to learn how to live and behave with those around us.

The problem arises when mistakes and ‘failures’ are seen to be feared and resisted. This view leads to the inevitable hiding of faults and a desperate and futile attempt at being perfect in the eyes of others. Judgement, in this culture, becomes a devastating rejection of a person into the abyss of eternal damnation. The community portrayed within the Rule of St. Benedict, however, is one rooted and established on grace and a desire to be humbled (‘humiliated’ in the truest sense of the word.) With grace, mistakes and faults are to be expected and open to redemption by God who, when invited to, can cleanse us from all faults and make us perfect by his Spirit. Judgement, in this culture of grace, is seen as a diagnosis of a problem that is curable by the great Healer. The rejection of judgement is the resisting of full force of grace and healing within the Body of Christ.

In the issues of mistakes in the ‘mundane’ parts of communal life, St. Benedict is essentially saying in this chapter,

See above.

Although there is one difference in this chapter which has not been said in previous chapters,

If the cause of the sin is secret (hidden in the soul), the monk should confess to the abbot or one of the spiritual fathers. (my emphasis)

Throughout the Rule so far, the advice is to take confession to the abbot and he shall make judgement on the form and severity of correction. Here, however, there is the option of not going to the abbot but ‘one of the spiritual fathers’. When the fault is internal, i.e. not a tangible, which does not impact the community in a practical way, then the monk can go and admit it to another with authority granted to them by the abbot. This must be done, as with other sins, quickly before it becomes habitual or longer lasting.

This is characteristically practical of St. Benedict. I know that I have thoughts and temptations each day which pass, unseen by others, through my mind which effect my behaviour and attitude towards others. I can keep them private out of fear of being judged for thinking or feeling such things and no one would be any the wiser, their opinion of me would still be good and I wouldn’t upset or hurt them and thus cause them to reject me in some way. I justify the hiding of these mistakes by saying I don’t want to upset my brothers or sisters and cause them to act out of anger but it’s not the full truth.

In the Apprentice this year, one candidate made a mistake which cost the team dearly in the task. He was obviously ashamed of his failure and, instead of admitting it to the others, he ‘made a business decision’ and ‘for the morale of the team’ to not tell them: he lied. In the boardroom the truth came out and he continued to persuade the others, Lord Sugar and himself that it was solely for the morale of the team. I was surprised to hear, after he was ‘fired’, that others said this was a reasonable thing to do and was an established ‘technique’ in business. It was hiding in the darkness out of fear of the idol of himself he had made would crumble and he would be humbled.

Going to another and confessing the thoughts or inner sins stops us from building the idols of ourselves whilst, at the same time, protecting those who may not yet have the grace to forgive and pray for our healing from the mistake. The hearer of the confession may feel that the wisest thing to do in order to be healed is to go to others who may be affected by the inner mistake and admit it to them without involving others in the community. That other person may be the abbot and so it would be wise to time that admission for the danger is, the abbot still being human and able to fall themselves, might respond rashly out of anger or fear.
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Sacred/Mundane

I had a good conversation with someone this week about the frustrations of church and they were keen to express their disappointment and anger at the irrelevance of church services to the majority of the population of this country. They had no problem with the Church, the people who make up the Body of Christ, but the worship services were a waste of time. I wonder whether the division between these two things is the problem here. What I mean is, if you don’t engage in the worship services of the Church then how do you engage with the other aspects of the Church’s life? You should have the same attitude when you go to a Sunday service (if your church meets on a Sunday) as you do when you meet together for social times because worship encompasses both activity/tasks and the devotion of time in the presence of God. God should be involved in all that we do, no matter where we are as individual disciples or with other Christians. We know this, so why is it that we say in one instance,

This particular group is my church.

and in another,

I don’t get that group of believers or how they express their faith (if indeed they have one)

The Church is the Church. It is, at it’s most basic level, a gathering of disciples of Jesus Christ. When we meet together we remind ourselves of the Body of Christ and we re-member Christ amongst us by his Holy Spirit. In this posture we humble ourselves before him and lay down our wills in favour of his and we worship, either by enacting his commands or proclaiming his greatness and majesty to position ourselves firmly beneath his will and command.

This should happen whenever we are with other followers of Jesus. Everything we say and do therefore should be worship in these two sense: reminding ourselves and each other of who we serve and to be humbled before him and also doing Christ’s work on earth/building his kingdom and not our own. The kitchen, cellar, garden, etc. then become places of worship because where ever we are we worship God.

If everywhere is sacred does this mean we no longer need specific places of worship? I would say that if we didn’t meet in one place we’d meet in another space and it would become sacred, therefore, we will always have specific sacred sites which we congregate in to intentionally praise and re-member Christ amongst us and receive from him. If we close our church buildings we’d need to find other buildings in which to meet for worship and if we moved we’d lose the connection with the two thousand year history and tradition of our faith and re-member with those ‘saints’ which have gone before.

Indeed, the whole of the worship service as passed down from generation to generation is a tool to connect with the saints throughout the ages to have relationship with the past, the present and the future. It is the mysterious work of God’s Spirit to bring us into the communion of Saints who will all stand, one day, in glory to sing God’s praises. Our worship services are, whether we feel it or not, a foretaste of this heavenly reality. We want to hold onto tradition, not because we are fearful of change, but because we want to honour our brothers and sisters before us and worship with them. It is a lesson we must heed in our time, to lay down our own preferences and choose to honour others before ourselves. This is painful and difficult thing to do because sometimes it feels like a one way street but we enter, in part, to Christ’s approach to us that when we were still sinners he came to meet us. He chose grace and became in the form of a servant and was obedient… to the point of death on the cross.

When we don’t appreciate the sacred in the mundane there is the danger that we will make the sacred, mundane. We stumble into our times of worship together and informality leads us to laziness and blindness. Samuel Beckett writes in his play ‘Waiting for Godot’,

But habit is a great deadener.(Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber, 2000) p.83)

We all find it easier to differentiate between ‘work’ and ‘life’; we talk of achieving the work/life balance but in the life of faith everything is work and everything is life. When you head into the office, the school or wherever you ‘work’ you do not leave your discipleship at the door. You’re going to that place with the mission of Christ ringing in your ear. The priority for disciples, over and above the job description, is to build God’s Kingdom here on earth, to make disciples, to be light in the world. In this mindset we approach worship as a duty that we feel forced to do in our ‘spare time’, there is then the pressure of making it beneficial and for us to feel something. When the service doesn’t live up to that expectation we reject it and complain and grumble. If we were to approach it with the knowledge that we should always be worshipping and encouraging one another as disciples then whenever we meet it is a joining in of what is going on in all of our hearts. Worship then is not the shop window of the community but the factory, the powerhouse at the centre. We return to this place of communal re-membering of Christ to be fed and to be sent out. Inviting people into the community is through the thresholds of the community and via the waters of baptism.

Reflection

This chapter is a bridge between two important points. We are moving from the discussion on the need for swift admission of faults and mistakes, firmly establishing an attitude towards judgement within the framework of grace and humility. We are moving to a discussion on the erasing of a sacred/mundane divide which protects us from the demands of discipleship. The establishing of a distinction between sacred and mundane is done for the same reason we find we want to maintain both light and darkness. In one we can do what we like and behave without judgement and shame whilst still being able to enter into the other controlling what others see and what they don’t.

Those who argue that darkness must exist in order to appreciate the light are trying to justify the maintaining of that small corner of our lives that is useful to feel comfortable and in control. The problem is, without the light reaching those parts we cannot appreciate the full force of grace which transforms and heals us to be the fully resurrected people of God. The Refiner’s fire must burn into every aspect of our lives and change us. This is a painful experience but until we go through it we cannot know the full brilliance of our God who we invite to lead us to holiness and peace.

Our communities must be rooted and established in grace. In this we intentionally seek to be humbled and then to see judgement in the right way as a means to be in the right position before our God who we worship in every aspect of our lives. This means to be actively seeking to be in right relationship with other Christians and trusting in the vehicle of grace: God’s Body, the Church.

If we are not channels of grace then we have no right to call ourselves church… The body of Christ the ultimate vehicle of grace. (John Barclay, a lecture on the wisdom of the cross in 1 Corinthians, Tuesday 4th June 2013, Diocese of York Clergy Conference)

Gracious and healing God, bring into light those things we long to keep hidden in the darkness. We invite your judgement onto us knowing that you are tender and loving towards those that fear you and you have come, in the person Jesus, to heal sinners like me. May our communities be places where mistakes and faults are dealt with quickly so we can experience more fully your grace and love for us.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 44: how the excommunicated are to make satisfaction

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

Do we need penance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the wages of sin is death…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Liberalism Delusion

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

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

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

Firstly, ‘human nature is good and rational’.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What they meant to say was…

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

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

Reflection

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

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

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

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 36: sick brothers

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

What is an infirmarian to do with my sickness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I clearly was not with God nor dependant on him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflection

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 33: private ownership by monks

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

What do I do with all my stuff?

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

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

One of them is,

What would we do with all our stuff?

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

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

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

My mum has saying,

It’s only stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflection

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

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

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

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

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

Come, Lord Jesus.