Tag Archives: Northumbria Community
Chapter 70: no one is to presume to strike another
We insist that no one is to strike or excommunicate a brother unless ordered by the abbot.
What is that to you?
I want to begin with a confession. I regularly dream of committing great acts of physical violence on other people. Often these people in my dream show no sign of being impacted by the punches, bites, kicks, etc. that I inflict on them. Part of the build up of violence in these dreams is that no matter how hard I attack my opponent they merely smile or continue to taunt me.
These dreams clearly reveal an inner violence within me of some sort; a form of anguish, frustration building up inside me. The figure who takes the most amount of beatings in my dream is my brother who I always associate with antagonism. He and I growing up had a typical brother relationship of competition, bullying and taunting. We are very different people with very different outlooks and approaches to life and this continues to cause (when we spend any long period of time together) a regression to childish responses in me. He has become a totem in my sub conscious for those people who seem oblivious to my frustrations and continue unchanged in their behaviour which irritate me.
I want to be clear that it has been 16 years, 3 months, 1 week and 6 days since I last punched someone in the face… it was my brother. We were sharing a room on the way up to a millennium celebration with our family and he was deliberately winding me up and we had wrestled with each other until I had pinned him down and, as usual, he taunted me, knowing that I never used physical violence. This time, however, I lost control and punched him clean in the nose… we haven’t fought since… Violence solves nothing, kids!
When St. Benedict insist on not striking someone many of us can’t imagining monks beating each other up but we must assume it must have been a common occurrence or it wouldn’t have been specified. The insistence also highlights, as Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount, that,
…if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement (Mt 5:22a)
Violence can be expressed in many forms and we ‘strike’ one another more than just physically. The same is true of excommunication.
Official excommunication is the task of the abbot only, as has been clearly defined previously in the Rule, but we can excommunicate others from our lives by choosing not to be near them or avoiding them. We are able to exist in the shallow comfort of community life if we hold onto the control of who we allow into our inner life. We look upon one others with the eyes of judgement choosing to give worth and value to one and not the other. In this way we excommunicate people from the community of our heart.
St. Benedict is insisting that we change our heart.
It is in this deeper area of our personal conversion that we must be attentive. Only with the progress through the ladder of humility and under the obedience that is required in that that we can be changed. Again we see the Benedictine vows of stability, obedience and conversion creating the dynamic, paradoxical tension in the life of discipleship.
As with the previous chapter in which the presumption of coming to the help of another monk, in striking or excommunicating another we are placing ourselves between them and God. It is God alone, through the authority of the abbot, that judgement (if it is passed at all) is made. If we presume to step in and mediate we ourselves fall short for in doing this we ultimately say to God,
We don’t trust you’ll do what we expect.
The last two chapters have reminded me of the end of the gospel of John where Jesus has re-instating Peter after his denial.
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” (Jn 21:20-22)
The sins and failings of our brothers and sisters must first be a call to our own repentance as we acknowledge that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23) Again we must place ourselves in the narrative of creation, redemption, sanctification.
Our discipleship begins with an acknowledgement that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are created beings formed from the earth by a loving and gracious Father. Our life is solely dependent on his good will and pleasure. From this point we know that we are called to live out a life of freely chosen devotion to him, a life of willing obedience. It is in following him by way of his Son that we are transformed into his likeness. He bestows himself upon those who desire conversion in the person of the Holy Spirit who continues to equip and empower us to continue the work of redemption. The Holy Spirit also makes us holy, distinct from the way of the world and marks us out as God’s own people; beloved.
If we miss out the important acknowledgement, in full force, that we are dust, nothing, sinners, then we limit our appreciation of grace within our life. A community grows and flourishes when all truly inhabit this story of our faith. If we can rightly believe the truth of this in our life and the life of each other then we are able to see Christ working out his purposes in one another.
I’ll finish with a story from the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It is said that she ‘sought out the company of those nuns whose temperaments she found hardest to bear.’ A fellow novice nun, Martha of Jesus, who spent her childhood years in various orphanages and who was described by all as emotionally unbalanced, with a violent temper, became the focus of Thérèse’s attention. It is said that the Mother Superior became concerned that Thérèse was infatuated with Martha and ordered her to stop spending so much time with her. After Thérèse’s death it was discovered that
[she] went out of her way to spend time with, and therefore to love, the people she found most repellent. It was an effective means of achieving interior poverty, a way to remove a place to rest her head. (Kathryn Harrison, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (New York: Penguin Group, 2003) p. 111)
A commitment to conversion of life relies on a rootedness in humility achieved through obedience to authority outside of ourselves. That conversion, for Thérèse of Lisieux, was about achieving interior poverty in the likeness of Christ.
Reflection
What I am about to say is not as controversial as it may first appear: conflict and tension gives a community the necessary dynamic to grow and move forward. Disagreement is not only expected within community it is necessary. Without it life together becomes, firstly, bland and also, secondly, stagnated, dare I say, dead. In the tension of polarised opinion there is a movement in thought, ideals, opinions and direction. As people wrestle with one another in disagreement we all develop and grow.
That’s why the foundational commitment to the narrative outlined above alongside a vow to chastity and stability alongside an equal vow to conversion of life creates the environment to disagree well. It won’t come as a surprise that there are members of my Christian community, locally, nationally and internationally, that I have consider punching in the face on a number of occasions (I’m sure my face has been imagined being pushed through a wall more than once!) It is a natural response to frustration and conflict but the next step is the most important in spiritual growth. Do we choose to consider how to, not necessarily physically strike them or officially excommunicate them but internally do so? What do we do with these internal temptations and thoughts? Father Maximos, in Kyriacos C. Markides book, ‘The Mountain of Silence, suggests,
We ignore them. That is what the Church fathers tell us to do. They explain that they are like flies and we are to bat them away… We can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ by His grace. (Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: a search for Orthodox spirituality (Indiana: Doubleday, 2002), quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2: farther up and farther in (London: William Collins, 2015) p.1158-9)
Community life is fraught with dangers of division and it is in the dynamic interplay of the trinitarian vows of stability/chastity, obedience and conversion/poverty and under the narrative of creation, redemption and sanctification that these issues can be a positive force rather than a destructive one.
How often in Church life do we avoid conflict because we do not know how to travel through the terrain? It is far better, I propose, that we live within the context of a life committed to the principles outlined here; that, along with the previous chapter, we are to give attention to our own growth in faith rather than take on the growth of others. It is our own conversion that we are responsible for and to allow others to sort out their own growth, trusting and praying for them as they do so. To see them through the eyes of humility, obedience and holiness.
Father Maximos also suggests that it is the practice of the Jesus Prayer that keeps ‘repetitive assaultive thoughts’ at bay.
St Mark the Ascetic said that he gave credit for his prayer life to Satan. Every time he was tempted by the devil, he prayed, thus, he prayed alot. (Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: a search for Orthodox spirituality (Indiana: Doubleday, 2002), quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2: farther up and farther in (London: William Collins, 2015) p.1159)
Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Parish Monasticism: an update
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 50: brothers who work at a distance from the oratory or are traveling
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 20: reverence in prayer
If we wish to ask a favour of those who hold temporal power, we dare not do so except with humility and respect.
How do we pray?
At the end of this section on the Divine Office it is interesting that St. Benedict decides to end on the topic of humility. The chapter before this section was also about humility. It seems this is of the deepest importance to St. Benedict and is at the very heart of the Rule for community life. It has been this revisiting that has made me re-read my reflections on humility.
I still struggle with this. I wrestle in my inner life trying to work it out and allowing God to shape me free from my resistance. I am increasingly aware that one cannot do this work in isolation; one always needs a community around them to help in the practice of humility. This community must, together, commit to the work of supporting and holding one another as each one enters into the process of going deeper with God.
St. Benedict uses the experience of being in the present of humans who hold significant power and how, when we are with them, we are aware of our our own power (or lack of it). We naturally compare ourselves with one another and this is most definite when the contrast is large. It is only when the difference between us and others is clear that we are forced to acknowledge it to ourselves. It is in these times we know where we stand in the ‘pecking order’.
At the end of this week I will visit Archbishop John Sentamu of York. He has recently taken on the role as Episcopal oversight of the Deanery of York of which I am a part. He now is my bishop to whom I go to for clergy review, discipline and support. I have always really appreciated ++Sentamu’s ministry and we have shared many good conversations together. He ordained me both as a deacon and a priest and we have served together on the Step Forward conference run each year at Bishopthorpe Palace.
Despite having shared some social time together, as well as more formal occasions, I am always deeply aware of the weight of his presence and his authority. I may have questions or doubts as to how he uses that power but nonetheless I am acutely aware of his abilities to wield it both for good and (potentially) for bad. When we talk I rarely talk at great length due, in the most part, to my awareness of lack of knowledge and authority on subjects. On both legal, spiritual, theological and ethical matters ++Sentamu has more experience and expertise than I and should bow out of any debate. I did try once to argue that St. Aidan was to be given more credit than St. Paulinus and St. Augustine for the evangelisation of England… I tried but I think I failed!
This respect, forced or deserved, that I feel in the presence of ++Sentamu is not debilitating nor destructive of a relationship. As well as feeling inferior I also feel respected and cared for by him. My respect for him as a person is, I hope, mutual. I know he is interested in me and my ministry. I think he wants to see me flourish and wants to support me. I am listened to by him and, as much as he can, he looks out for me and holds me in some esteem. I am thankful for this relationship and thank God for our partnership in the Gospel.
St. Benedict uses this experience to portray our relationship with God. God is much more worthy of respect and awe than ++Sentamu. God alone is to be feared but, along with this fear there is also a deep sense of the safety and love God has for us, his children. When we go into his presence in pray we are to balance these emotions.
Some of us err, too much on the side of familial and breeze into God’s presence with conversation and chit chat. There’s nothing wrong with that. God loves to speak to us and have relationship with us but we should never take such relationship for granted. At times a colloquial relationship with God can lead to forgetting the heavy price paid for such a relationship which we should always be mindful of and thankful for. This awareness of the weighty grace shown to us should lead us into a deep awe and amazement at what he has done in order to have the conversation you so easily can have with him.
Others, however, err on the side of fear and trembling and see God so high and lofty above us that he remains distant from us with little affection between us. Christianity is unique in its understanding of God as, Abba Father. Jesus revealed a desire of God to be intimately involved in our lives like a good father is. Most religions see God as Creator and all powerful, and rightly so, but they miss out on that close and caring father image. Christians, following the example of Christ, emphasise this fatherly image because God has shown he cares for us by his death and resurrection.
God, in the Bible, is described as both a Lion and a Lamb. He is a lion because he is fierce and dangerous, ferocious. He is also known as a lamb, led to the slaughter, pastoral and innocent. The lion image creates in us a caution; no one would walk into a lion’s cage free from fear and respect but it would take something particularly peculiar for someone to be afraid of a lamb. Our approach to prayer and our relationship with God should be as C.S. Lewis describes it in his Narnia series. When the children enter Narnia for the first time, Aslan, the God figure in the series, is described by Mr and Mrs Beaver. Lucy asks whether Aslan is safe,
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
The different kinds of prayers
I am aware of the different types of prayer that we participate in and yet we only use one word for them all. We say prayers in church services, and at Divine Offices. We pray alone, in pairs and in small groups. We pray out loud and in silence. We pray requests to God. We pray for discernment. We listen. We talk. We pray out of duty and we pray out of need. Contemplation is prayer just as much as extemporary, charismatic prayers. All of these have something different about them but they’re all called ‘prayer’.
It is wrong to suggest one is superior to another but equally it would be wrong to not use one type by telling ourselves they are all the same. To say, “I don’t pray out loud because it’s just the same as praying in silence.” leads you away from praying with others and sharing the public side of our faith; it would be like saying, “I don’t talk to my friend when other people are in the room.” It’s weird! In this chapter, St. Benedict is speaking specifically about prayers in the Divine Office. Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert, suggests,
The admonition on short prayer in community comes from the way in which our ancestors looked at prayer. Quite often the saying of prayers was seen as distinct from the prayer itself. After saying a prayer, then one prayed in the heart and this was considered “prayer.” So in some of the early traditions, after each Psalm there was a short period for this spontaneous cry from the heart to the Lord. It is this type of prayer that must be kept short and pure–and not prolonged because it really cannot be prolonged. Attempts to prolong such prayer are usually just show and not reality. (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 20: Reverence in Prayer”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, May 20 2014, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/890.html)
Reflection
I continue to reflect on the place of prayer in communities. I’d be interested to know if research has been done on how the frequency and nature of prayer changes a communities experience and understanding of God. I am currently part of two particular communities with very different views on prayer. One, my parish church, has a broad understanding of prayer and each member seems to have a different view on what it is and how it should be done. This emphasis is not bad and, as a minister and teacher in the community, it is part of my role to encourage people to develop their prayer life to all the different types of prayer. The other community is Burning Fences which used to read a liturgy from Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community, at the end of our weekly gathering and now finds another kind of prayer. It was noted during a discussion last week that the inclusion of prayer has slowly morphed into a reflection on spirituality rather than a direct prayer. The place of prayer, i.e. talking directly to God, in Burning Fences is an interesting topic which we will need to raise as we move forward.
Abba Father, Glorious and Majestic Creator of the cosmos, I thank you for being my lion, defending me from foes and being able to fight for me the powers that seek to oppress me. I thank you also for being the lamb that was slain. I thank you that I can meet you in the Temple, where you sit on a throne high and lifted up and that I can meet you in the street, in the face of the poor and down cast, that I know you close by in my home and work.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Chapter 18: psalms – order to be chanted
Monks who chant less than the entire Psalter, with canticles, each week are slothful in their service to God.
How much should I be praying?
For ten weeks now I have been praying and meditating on the place and structure of prayer in the life of a monastic community. During this time I have been asking myself, whether it has been communicated on this journal or not, what place does prayer take in my life? The answer has often been: I must try harder. This is a common response to prayer and Bible reading to many Christians, ordained, lay, within religious orders or not. It is easy to compare ourselves to others or to our perception to others or , even worse, to an impossible ideal. There’s a proverb within the church which says,
Prayer is like sex. Most people lie about how much they’re doing it and how well it is going.
It is easy to compare ourselves to others and to beat ourselves up on how lazy and difficult we find prayer, reading the Bible, service to the poor, etc. We do it instinctively. If it’s not the person sat next to you in church or your own priest or lay workers then there’s a renowned saint (for me it’s people like Shane Claiborne!) who we project onto heavenly virtues and exult them to ‘super-Christian’. I am reminded of Jesus’ last exchange with Peter in John’s gospel,
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” (John 21:20-22)
What is that to you?
Those words should ring in our ears when we find ourselves falling into a self-destructive cycle of despair. When you find yourself saying,
I should be reading the Bible as much as [insert name of idealised version of a fellow Christian here].
Or,
I wish I had their prayer life. They’re always praying.
Having said that we must be careful also to be realistic with our time. Most of us could prioritise prayer and Bible reading better but that’s the truth of priorities; you prioritise what you prioritise. We need to firstly acknowledge what we do prioritise and why. What is it that you consider more important than prayer? What do you turn to before you turn to prayer or reading the Bible? Why does this, or ‘these’, things take precedent? Are they easier? Are they more enjoyable?
For me, it’s TV, social media and work.
I justify TV because it’s important to rest and wind down after work. I justify social media because it’s important for me to know what’s going on in the lives of my friends, family and communities. I justify work because I’ve been called to it by God and people are relying on me to support them in their lives. But that’s all these priorities are; justifications. On their own and in isolation there’s nothing wrong with these activities and, yes, they need to be done and be a part of a balanced life but the reality is I minimise my time in prayer and reading the Bible in favour of doing those three things.
Added to that I lie to myself about my prayer life. I find myself saying,
I pray while I…(e.g. look at my Twitter stream/Facebook wall).
At times I do but that is not always a deliberate thing, a dedicated time set aside to speak with God. Most of the time it’s a one way dictation of things He has to do for me. The same is true for reading the Bible; I say,
I read the Bible today while I prepared for… (e.g. a sermon).
That’s not the kind of reading that feeds the soul; that’s work. I read it with a particular energy; I’m listening for that teaching point, that image which will help people to connect with the passage. I don’t always find myself asking those personal questions like,
What is God saying to me in this?
Don’t get me wrong, I do ok. At morning and evening prayer (and at times, midday prayer) I engage with Scripture on that level and I pray for a dedicated time but even these times are dry and distracted. These times are dedicated and disciplined for the very reality, for me, that I just won’t ensure I am praying as much as I should. This is not about comparing with those dedicated intercessors and pray-ers in the Body of Christ but a basic level for any disciple to remain rooted in God.
I’d suggest to ‘normal’, working (paid and unpaid) Christians engaging in the world, that at least one regular time of prayer a day is minimum. That time of prayer, what ever form it takes, should be undistracted and deliberate for a minimum of fifteen minutes. This is not an excessive amount of time. Consider how long it takes to drink a cup of tea? When you start to consider a regular time when, presently, you are doing nothing, you will begin to realise how much you fill your days with all manner of tasks without even considering the time you dedicate to it. I catch myself on a regular basis, unconsciously walking upstairs into my office and turning on the computer without knowing why. Habit and routine take over and I tell myself I’m busy and I create work for myself. It’s easy to do.
Rhythms of prayer
We who live in the world all need to acknowledge that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to dedicate the kind of time that a Benedictine community spends in prayer. If we add up the typical time spent in prayer for such a community it would be about 3 1/2 hours in Divine Office/communal set prayers then an hour of prayerful reading of Scripture and half an hour silent personal prayer we can see that a monk should be praying 5 hours a day. Be careful not to start comparing yourself and beating yourself up about how ‘lazy’ you are! Remember that that 5 hours is split up and goes into the night but even that would have a big impact on our energy levels if we are also trying to hold down a full time, or even part time job, possibly a family and commitments to a Church community.
For a New Monastic community who have to balance the everyday life of family and employment with prayer and service, a more realistic rhythm of prayer should be established. This will be different for each expression and for the lives of those involved in such communities but it will require, like that of St. Benedict’s, a framework which will hold the community accountable; a framework and guidance as to how much is possible and helpful for prayer to be a priority.
As I said, I find a set time time in the morning, before I start work, and one in the evening just as people are finishing their work. My work often stretches into the evening so that evening prayer is praying that the work of many in my communities will bear fruit for God’s Kingdom. A commonality between such ‘monastic’ communities is an established morning prayer either said at the same time by all the members and, if possible, in the same place. Some have a Night Prayer others an evening, some have midday prayers but each is flexible to help and guide the community to have prayer woven into the routine.
After about five years of a rhythm of prayer (which has changed and evolved) I feel odd when I am not praying at 8.30am a set Office (be that Common Worship or Celtic Daily Prayer). My wife knows that at 5.30pm I will be praying and we have set dinner time around that fact. I schedule meetings around this time and say to people who ‘need’ me,
I’m sorry I have a meeting then.
On occasions I need to adapt and move stuff but that must be done prayerfully and with consideration.
Starting a day with set prayers, for me who is not a morning person, is useful as I don’t need to be ‘up for it’. I turn up and I am quiet with god. I find I repeat the same quiet prayer before I begin,
Oh Lord, I am so tired, give me strength for today.
I then use this time to go through my day and as I remember all the things I have planned I invite God into them.
Lord, will you be with me as I meet with…
Lord, what is it that you want me to say to…
Lord, help me face this difficult challenge.
I find, as I perform the tasks of the day I remember my prayer that morning and repeat it before I begin, as I do it and after it is done. These are not dedicated times of prayer just quick short repetitions remembering God with me as I go about my business.
Reflection
This part of my blog has slipped at times from what I had intended it to be. I had wanted this section to be a possible practical step I could take to move from theory to action. This week I want to ponder what this rhythm of prayer looks like in community.
In my parish we offer morning and evening prayer for anyone. Both times are not easy for people to make. There are many reasons why people can’t come but I suspect that anytime would be difficult because rhythms of prayer are not understood and challenge people’s priorities. I sit with one or two others at both times. We have a routine and we are flexible when necessary. I would love to build a community that came together each day to dedicate themselves to prayer together.
To do this in a parish would require a dedicated season studying and teaching on the subject and then a focussed discussion on what that prayer would look like for the members of the community there. I don’t think we ask what prayer looks like as the Body of Christ on a daily basis. This challenges our Sunday focussed life together and also what we see our role in society as.
Lord, call your people to yourself each day to hear and receive all we need from you. Take us from our lives and shape us into disciples, placing us back into those lives changed and equipped for the building up of your Kingdom in the places we are sent.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Chapter 17: the number of psalms said in the Day Office
If the monastic community is numerous, the Hours shall be sung with antiphons; if small, without.
What is the place of artistic expressions within a community?
I have been on a community weekend away with Burning Fences where I was privileged to be able to organise/lead the input. I was acutely aware that, we, as a community, are experiencing some of the natural friction to life in relationship. There are multiple desires and visions to balance and contend with, there is the encouragement to bring brokenness and struggles into the public sphere in order to be known more deeply. All of this brings a highly volatile space and one that has, simultaneously both great potential for liberation and great risk of suffering and pain. We are not the first nor are we alone to experience some of this; it is the natural risk of relationship which commitment demands you fully enter and grasp.
I introduce this week’s reflection like this merely to highlight how this beloved community, who I consider to be the place from which I speak, the people with whom I speak and the situation to which I speak, is continually leading me into an deeper understanding of what a monastic apostolic community looks like. It also is proving to be the practical out workings of my reflections on the Rule of St. Benedict and I find that both inspiring and encouraging.
The other reason I begin by discussing Burning Fences is because, on the weekend away, we used Open Space Technology to hold conversations about that which is important to us as a collective. One of those discussions was on the place of creativity in community and explored (for the parts I was there for) the specific part of Burning Fences’ life; artistic expression/performance.
All of Burning Fences appreciate art in it’s many forms but not all of those who gather are able to contribute or, feel that they would like to. For some, Burning Fences is a place where they can explore new artistic endeavours, to try out and collaborate, but for others they don’t feel they are ‘creative’ in this way. Although I would not use that word for what they are expressing, choosing rather to use the word ‘artistic’, I do agree that there are some who are more competent and able to perform/present art in our group while others question what they have to offer to feel a part of Burning Fences.
On the Friday evening of our weekend away we held a ‘community circle’. This ‘community circle’ is a combination of haflat samar, story circles (traditionally held in the old celtic church) and Caedmon Evening (currently practiced by the Northumbria Community). The framework of the evening is everyone is invited to bring something to share as an expression of any kind. This contribution can be a simple joke, an epic poem, a song, a quote, anything that they think will inspire or facilitate reflection. I, as host, began by reading a story to frame the evening. I read a rewriting of Bede’s account of Caedmon who, loved listening in on such evenings but never felt able to contribute until, one night, he found himself dreaming about God giving him the gift of song. When he awoke he was able to sing beautifully. After this story, the group then participate in a collective act of art/liturgy. In this context liturgy acts as a binding together and bringing people together and encourages the group to express a shared desire or identity.
After this shared act the space is open for anyone to speak into it. People are encouraged to listen and respond how they feel is appropriate. The order of presentation is completely self-governed and each person places their contribution where they feel it fits best. By the end of the evening everyone had contributed something and it had flowed beautifully. There were some performances which may have been judged ‘better’ than others but in the light of day I could not tell you which was which because in that space of community it was not the objective quality that was important but the way in which we (and our offering) interacted with others. (You can read a poem which I wrote during our ‘community circle’ here.)
So what is the place of artistic expressions within a community?
For many communities the use of music and song is central to their community gatherings. Rituals and liturgical frameworks use music and rhythm. A community at its most basic is a social group whose members share a commonality of some kind. In order to maintain a cohesion to any community there needs to be an expression of that shared commonality, be they beliefs, locality, ideas or any other identifiers. This most profound way of doing this is through the evocative and emotive use of music. Artistic expression, therefore, takes an important part of many communities.
The place of art
What I find interesting about this chapter in the Rule of St. Benedict is the directions for when a community is small.
If the monastic community is numerous, the Hours shall be sung with antiphons; if small, without.
This is music to my ears (excuse the pun). I do not have a strong singing voice and I am very self conscious. I love to listen to singing and particularly choral harmonies but I struggle to participate. I join in singing if there is enough noise to drown me out and I am confident no one can hear my unstable voice. If I am leading a small group and I would love to worship in that context then I must rely on others’ abilities to lead in sung worship or otherwise we don’t get to enjoy that experience. Even when there is someone else leading the singing I struggle to join in and end up mute hoping no one notices that I am singing and feeling concerned that I am distancing myself from the group.
One phrase that stands out from the discussion on the place of creativity in community, particularly a group like Burning Fences, was that,
Artistic expression is affirmed/valued but not enforced.
We, as a community, appreciate artistic expression and will encourage anyone, whatever level of competency they have, to contribute but we do not enforce it as a necessary part of membership. This does mean that the more experienced artists are more prominent when it comes to the times for artistic expression but that does not equate to being more valued within the community. We appreciate that offering because, for some, we cannot make it but we want to enjoy it as a gathering activity but that does not mean that those members who can are in some way more important. If there is no offering in this way then you adapt, for the act must primarily be a communal expression and only then must we consider the practicalities of how we make it happen.
Artistic expression is appreciated but it is not a marker of your place in the community.
Reflection
Community should be a space where people feel safe and free to let down forced personas and be vulnerable. This makes community a difficult place because there is a high risk of it getting very messy very quickly and this kind of life should not be entered into lightly. It does require a level of commitment from a number of people or it will never achieve the level of trust and intimacy required for this vulnerability to be life-giving. It is only in a safe, trusting, committed community where people are free to explore new expressions of themselves and embrace the risk of failure in working out relationships and connection. This can be done through artistic expressions and, indeed, it is a special kind of expression, but it is not the only way.
We at Burning Fences, appreciate and affirm the musical and poetic expressions of beauty and we enjoy them together, even though not every member can directly contribute. We, the more experienced/confident artists are only able to express our shared commonality by listening and knowing all members. Membership is not measured by the artistic contributions one makes but by the depth of relationships you participate in.
Creative God in Trinity, you make us to know and enjoy beauty with others. We thank you for the ability of some to create beautiful music and song, images and poetry. We thank you for others who create beautiful relationships with equal skill. We thank you for others who support the beauty of life in their skills to construct order and stability in practical ways. We thank you for all of this as expressions of your immeasurable creativity in all things.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Chapter 16: the Day Office
The prophet says: “Seven times daily I have sung your praises… I arose at midnight to confess to You.”
Why prayer?
There seems to me to be a distinction in ministry between those who are apostolic and those who are monastic. These two distinctions traditionally make up the balance of the Church’s mission in the world; ‘to go and tell the world’ and ‘to watch and pray’. These two calls on the Church make up the heart of the New Monastic Movement, ‘contemplative action’. The Northumbria Community speak of this as their call to being ‘Alone Together’.
As a Community we’ve always understood the need to balance ‘a prayer that is quiet and contemplative with a faith that is active and contagious’, in expressing our way for living.
St. Benedict, in this chapter, gives reasons for the Divine Offices by quoting Psalm 118 (119),
I arose at midnight to confess to you… Seven times a day have I sung your praises.
Therefore, in Benedictine communities, they pray at eight set times a day: Matins (midnight) and then, Lauds (before sunrise), Prime (6am), Terce (9am), Sext (midday), None (3pm), Vespers (evening/6pm) and Compline (bedtime/9pm). This rigorous pattern of prayer just emphasises again the centrality of the call of such monastic communities to prayer and contemplation. Thomas Merton finishes off his wonderful book ‘Contemplative Prayer’ with these words,
Without contemplation and interior prayer the Church cannot fulfil her mission to transform and save mankind. Without contemplation, she will be reduced to being servant of cynical and worldly powers, no matter how hard her faithful may protest that they are fighting for the Kingdom of God. (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longmann and Todd, 2010) p.144)
I quote Merton here because in this book and his other work ‘Seeds of Contemplation’, dedicated to the practice of contemplation, he continually links it to the mission and practical action of the Church in society. For this spiritual writer, famed for his call to the hermitage, the life of a monastic is intrinsically linked to the missional and apostolic work of the Body of Christ. Without one you cannot have the other.
Monastic Apostles/Apostolic Monks
Monastic comes from the Greek word, monastikos (from the root: monos – alone). Monastikos means ‘to live alone’ and was used to describe the hermits and Desert Fathers and Mothers of the early Church. These hermits became teachers of this solitary life and gathered around them a community of ‘novices’. This, over time became the basis and foundations of the monastic communities we see across the world. All of them owe their tradition to St. Anthony and the many other Desert Fathers and Mothers (Abbas and Ammas) who went out from society to dedicate their life to communion with God without any distractions of life. The monastic call, therefore, is to the dedication to watch and pray.
The apostolic call, I would suggest, is to take on the Great Commission given by Christ at his ascension,
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20a)
Apostolic comes from the Greek word, apostolikos (from the roots: apo – away from and stello – to place, set in order). Apostolikos means ‘to send away’ or ‘to be sent’ and was used to describe those whom Jesus sent to witness to his Kingdom and Resurrection in the Gospels. These Apostles also became teachers and in Acts it is said that the Church,
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)
It is useful, at this point, to draw our attention to a story in Mark’s gospel which illustrates this balance between being alone with God in contemplation and reflection and to be sent out to do his work in mission.
Starting at Mark 6:6b we read,
Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
They become ‘apostles’, sent out to build and spread the Kingdom. Then, after the death of John the Baptist, we meet the ‘apostles’ again.
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.
Now they are being called to be alone, solitary, in a deserted place; they become ‘monastics’, alone with Jesus. But the story does not finish there.
Now many saw them going and recognised them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”
The disciples, wanting to be alone with Jesus see the need of the society in which they find themselves and they want to remain faithful to that monastic call so they ask to send the crowd away. Jesus, however, calls them to enter again into ministry and give them food. They don’t achieve that much needed ‘monastic’ time.
After the crowd are feed and Jesus reveals the Kingdom of God amongst them, he dismisses the disciples to a remote place and he himself goes to be alone with God.
The Divine offices in the monastic community are to remind the members to pray throughout the day. It is to call them back to their specific call to prayer and contemplation but, as we shall see later this year the community is not to disregard the call to mission and action. I am aware now that, St. Benedict has structured his Rule like that of a house; he begins with the foundations of character (humility and obedience), then comes the basis of prayer and contemplation, after which we shall explore community and relationships, then we look at the place of work.
Reflection
It seems that there is a need for both the monastic and the apostolic
Like all personal and specific calls from God to a particular ministry, we must be careful to hold them within the context of the wider call of all disciples. It is not right, although many preach this approach, to ‘specialise’ in a ministry to the detriment to the call to the basics of all disciples. For those of us who are more inclined to the prayerful contemplation, we must remind ourselves that to be transformed into the likeness of Christ is to be missional; sent people. For those of us who are more inclined to the evangelistic action, we must remind ourselves that to be transformed into the likeness of Christ is to be prayerful; alone with God.
Although I feel a strong call to the monastic life, I am also aware of the apostolic charge given to me by God. We are all to witness to the resurrection in our lives, to help all people that we meet to encounter the risen Lord. None are exempt from this work! The Kingdom of God is a collaboration between Christ and his bride, the Church, that is all of us who are baptised into his Body. Likewise non of us are exempt from the call to watch and pray with Christ and we return to the Merton quote above which identifies, helpfully, the need for contemplation, reflection, a deep listening prayer to be the basis of all missional activity; without it we will be building our own empires of sand.
Missional God, who calls us to solitary places to watch and pray with you, call us all to the life of contemplative action where, rooted in your grace, and will we may obediently follow you to feed the hungry, heal the sick and to make disciples. Where we have been lax in prayer and contemplation give us strength. Where we have been faithless in our witness to others may you give us courage and in all things may we have faith hope and love to serve you.
Come, Lord Jesus
Chapter 1: the different kind of monks and their customs
…let us with God’s help establish a rule for Cenobites who are the best kind of monks.
Who is my community?
This opening chapter is sober reading. I return to the wise warning of Sister Catherine Wybourne,
Pray and read. I didn’t speak about RB until I’d lived under it in community for 15 years.
It is obvious that Cenobites, ‘those who live in a monastery waging their war under a rule and an abbot’ are St. Benedict’s ideal (aside from the Anchorites/hermits). This is right, of course, for not only am I reminded of God’s statement in Genesis, ‘“It is not good for the man to be alone.”’ (Genesis 2:18) but also we return to the question we asked last week, ‘Who is my master?’
It is clear that the monastic life is never to be done in isolation; an individual, personal choice unconnected from others but, rather, a public commitment to others with whom one binds oneself. St. Benedict establishes early, the call to monastic life is the call to a cenobiac life (the Latin derivation of the Greek koinos, “common”, and bios, “life”.) The Sarabaites and the gyratory monks are spoken of with such distain, ‘unschooled’, ‘untested’, ‘soft’, ‘openly lying to God’,
It is better to be silent as to their wretched life style than to speak.
Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert, helpful suggests,
I suppose that we are all Sarabaites to some degree, and must fight constantly against that tendency…Humanly, of course, we all tend to call holy what we believe in and to consider forbidden that which we dislike. This is part of the gift of having a tradition that we can accept and grow in. (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 1: The Kinds of Monks”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, January 8 2014, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/66.html)
The Sarabaites and the gyratory monks both are marked, not by the lack of other human beings but by the lack of a human authority; an abbot who is the focus and teacher of a Rule. A community, it seems, must have a shared set of principles (A Rule) and one who lives it out and interprets the Rule for the community (An Abbot) in order for it to be beneficial. It is of no use engaging with a ‘community’ if you are not willing to be obedient to others; sacrificing personal desires and will and allowing yourself be taught. Again, Lawrence wisely observes,
There is a real formation in having to deal with other human persons in a community and with having to learn to live with a superior who is not perfect and yet to whom we give our obedience.(Lawrence, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/66.html)
Even the Anchorites ‘have spent much time in the monastery testing themselves.’ Here I am reminded of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and spiritual writer of the 20th century, who yearned to retreat into a hermitage but was continually called to remain in the community at The Abbey of Gethsemani,
The hope of finding a more solitary life now seems to be quite well founded. There are definite possibilities, but also there are still very great obstacles to be overcome, not least of which is my own Abbot. (October 8, 1959, Thomas Merton to Jean Leclercq, ‘Survival or Prophecy?: The letters of Thomas Merton and Jean Leclercq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) p.83)
This statement of desire to enter a solitary life was penned in 1959. Seven years earlier in Merton’s journals he is making decisions to enter into solitude,
I am now almost completely convinced that I am only really a monk when I am alone in the old toolshed Reverend Father gave me. (September 3, 1952, Thomas Merton, ‘A Search for Solitude: The Journals of Thomas Merton: Volume Three 1952-1960’ (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) p.14)
Remembering that Merton entered the monastic life in 1941, that’s a cenobiac life of 10 years before coming to a definite conviction to becoming an ‘Anchorite’ (although Merton always disliked the categories given to different types of monk). Even then, He would have to wait until 1965 until entering his own hermitage and living the life of solitude.
The Common Life
There is no escaping this question of human community with whom to live out the ‘common life’. As an ordained minister in a parish, who is my community? Who are the people who will share a ‘common life’ with me? The answer should be the congregation with whom I find myself but this is problematic.
There’s a popular notion that it is difficult and dangerous to be ‘friends’ with members of your own congregation. The reason is given that you can’t be close and intimate with one member with out being so with others. I think this is a silly notion and dismiss it. Ordained ministers must have personal relationships and will always have closer and stronger relationships with some members than others. Unless one either cuts themselves off from all close relationships then you will always spend more time and be more open with one, more than another.
The Cenobite, however, in order to give themselves completely to a ‘common life’ must know the trust and safety of deep relationship. It is difficult to enter into a life-long committed relationship without some degree of trust. Vulnerability requires a sense of safety, however small that might be. Here is where, community becomes tricky in parish.
Ordained ministry can become very much one sided in terms of commitment to relationship and community life. The reasons people attend church are many and varied from duty to a deep call/vocation to the life and work of God’s Church. Some turn up just for a quick fix, or because it is just part of their routine; they desire nothing more than to hear the same old words and to be comforted and propped up by a sense that it’s still going on. Others go to be challenged, to be given something to think and pray about; they want to reflect deeply about their faith, to encounter God. As a pastor to all of these, as well as to those in your parish that don’t attend church, you want to enter into their lives to be there in every aspect. You want to be able to speak words of comfort, consolation and challenge at the important moments of life; ultimately, you want to point to God at those times when He’s most needed.
This desire for that kind of relationship and community is not shared with everyone or fully understood by others. Some actively reject such intrusion whilst others seek it too much. Whichever way people go, the impetus comes from you. There’s rarely a sharing of life, equal and balanced in a ‘middle of the road’ Anglican parish. To call a whole congregation to a more committed ‘common life’ is not desired by all members as we all, as Lawrence suggested, ‘we all tend to call holy what we believe in and to consider forbidden that which we dislike.’ Where might the cenobiac commitment to other human beings challenge the consumerist approach seen at different degrees within parish ministry?
In the Diocese of York we have been looking at Five Marks of Growing. one of these is ‘commitment’. ++Sentamu wants to see disciples of Jesus growing in commitment. This must, I feel, include, at some level, a growth in the commitment to a common life and a more ‘monastic’ call.
So what does it look like to be in community, in a parish, when even members of your congregation aren’t interested or inclined to increase their commitment beyond their Sunday attendance?
I’d want to suggest a formalizing of the observable norm in most congregations: a central core group and a fringe. This is not about creating a boundary around the core people, stating some are ‘in’ and others ‘out’ but rather a marking of a central point with which one can place oneself; a shared set of principles (A Rule). Most congregations have this in some form or another but often it remains unspoken, and therefore unshared, or it is spoken of ambiguously (the generic, ‘In, Up and Out’).
Reflection
To be protected against myself I need to take up the yoke of A Rule, under the obedience to an Abbot.
I have committed, for three years, to the Rule of the Northumbria Community but I am currently struggling with the lack of a physical community around me with whom to share that walk. I also see the need of an Abbot under whom I can allow the Rule to shape and challenge me. The leaders of the Northumbria Community are available but are not sharing life with me; the everyday moments. Without an Abbot I am a Sarabaite with all the tendencies described in the Rule of St. Benedict.
Holy Trinity, Divine Community, You make us to share life with others. Help me to establish a rule under which I might learn the joys of obedience. Show me the human abbots with whom I can share the common life and to whom I can look for protection against my ‘unschooled desires’.
Come, Lord Jesus
Parish Monasticism?
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.
Since training for ordained ministry at Cranmer Hall in Durham, I have felt a call to a form of monastic life. Monastic life comes in many different forms and, with the rise of New Monasticism in the UK and USA, as well as other places, the word ‘monasticism’ has become a bit of a buzz word. I think this is down to a move of the Spirit; a conviction to return to ‘life together’. Our society and culture loves the concept of community but it has, as I have said before, ‘become vacuous by its overuse’. Community, in the religious/spiritual sense, does not just mean individual autonomous units living side by side but rather means a breakdown of our personal boundaries to enter into a deep communion with others. In this respect I’m indebted to the writings of John Zizioulas, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Henri Nouwen, Miroslav Volf and Stanley Hauerwas, who have become significant in the New Monastic movement*.
Whilst in Durham I encountered the Celtic Saints; Cuthbert, Bede and, of course, Aidan! Through their lives and witness I was inspired to live out my discipleship in a meaningful and deeper way. It wasn’t that I wasn’t inspired by other, non-monastic Christians but there was something about the commitment they showed to their Lord that opened my eyes.
I am an ‘all or nothing’ kind of guy. I have always been passionate and if my heart and gut isn’t fully committed to something I rarely engage. It’s been a good thing to have been brought up to be intensely fascinated by the world in which I live. My mother, one of my greatest inspirations, was a teacher fueled by her love of learning. she finds the world an awesome place and, with child like wonder, explores thoughts, ideas and experiences. After separating from my dad, she never re-married. She loved the solitary life (well with three children!) Over the last five or ten years, as her children left home and she experienced increasing personal freedom with her space and time, she has discovered a spirituality that not only enriches her but has transformed her.
She has struggled and experienced a difficult period within those years which had a major impact on that spiritual awakening but whatever has grown in her has been present in her, certainly, through my life. I look at her and she is a ‘monastic’ person; a woman who structures her day around encounters with her heavenly Father, who dedicates every moment of her life to prayer and service and who intentionally seeks God in the everyday.
As I look at my own life and come across decisions I find myself wanting to live a life like my mother because through her I see Christ, his compassion and his Passion. I see the fruit of a life that is dedicated in this way where integrity of character is based on an undiluted desire to be transformed and aligned to that of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God.
Whilst discovering the Celtic Saints I also found the Northumbria Community who, from the moment I read their Rule of Life, I knew would have an important part of my discipleship.
It was during my second year at college when I experienced the pain of a particular approach to ministry. This experience un-settled me (that’s an understatement, to say the least!) I found myself uncertain of what I was being called to as a minister in the Church of England. Most of my reflections around this time were around ‘home’ and the feeling of ‘exile’ was very prominent. In this emotional landscape I visited the Northumbria Community and the language that they used was a fresh homecoming… but that’s not quite right: A homecoming in the desert. The feeling of ‘edge’, ‘fringe’ and being an ‘outsider’ remained but I felt a peace about that place.
Since that time I’ve been grateful to God for sending me to the Northumbria Community and I have dedicated myself to attempting to live under their Rule of Life. I began their novitiate process and have been exploring it ever since. That process has, in recent months come to a halt as I struggle to ‘fit’ into parish ministry. It is this struggle which has encouraged me to start writing on the ‘monastic’ call to my life, whatever that ends up looking like.
Over Advent this year, I read Esther de Waal’s ‘Living with Contradiction: Benedictine wisdom for Everyday Living’. I enjoyed it, partly because it is clearly an inspiration for the Northumbria Community’s love of paradox but also because it opened up the cloisters of Benedictine monasteries to everyday life. It made me ask the question, ‘is it possible to have an open monastic house in a parish?’ What might it look like to be a parish priest with a monastic call?
During a stay at Nether Springs (the mother house of the Northumbria Community) I was speaking to Rev. Pete Askew about this sense of call to monastic life. He wisely suggested,
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.
Then he looked at me and joked,
You may be able to do it!
There’s something in my gut which says I should try. I will probably fail. I will probably discover that I am naiive and have completely misunderstood the monastic call. I have reservations about the outcome but I still feel the journey should be made and if, after prayer and seeking, God leads me to a place of humility where I learn from the wisdom of obedience then so much the better… I guess that is my aim; to learn what obedience means.
I plan to read and pray through the Rule of St. Benedict. I will take one chapter each week and reflect on it. This is not (and I want to emphasize this) an exercise of understanding Benedictine monasticism. I will not write my reflections as advice on how to live out the Rule; I am in no way qualified or experienced in that. My reflections will be a personal journey of how I read the Rule of St. Benedict, what the way of life, that is lived out by those who have committed their life to it, inspires in me, encourages in me and challenges me. I do hope it is of benefit to others but more than that I do hope God uses this journey of exploration to speak to me and shape me into what would be of benefit to him.
Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6)
*Of course there a female writers, Esther de Waal, Karen Ward, Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sister Catherine Wybourne.