When Bishop Stephen, the Bishop of Chelmsford,
was a parish priest in Huddersfield, a friend of his, who was involved in Adult
Education, told him that a course on Zen Buddhist meditation could have been
filled three times over and asked why the Church was not running a course on Christian
meditation.
Bishop Stephen later
moved to a role at the Cathedral in Peterborough and when he told this story
there, the Head of Adult Education asked him to run a course on Christian
meditation as part of the Adult Education programme. He did and the course
filled up with a mix of those who were already Christians and those who would
describe themselves are ‘searchers’.
This experience
confirmed for Bishop Stephen his belief that, with the right kind of
introduction, many people are open to the riches of Christian spirituality.
What better time than Lent for exploring some of that tradition? Lent is a time
for going deeper with God; for going deeper into our faith and the riches of
its tradition, particularly in terms of prayer.
If we were to run a
course on Christian meditation, what might it contain? Answering that question
might give some ideas on aspects of the Church’s tradition and
practice that we could explore this Lent, as part of going deeper into God
through prayer.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers were hermits, monks and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert
of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. These informal gatherings of
hermit monks and nuns became the model for Christian monasticism. Many of the
wise words and teachings of these early desert monks and nuns were collected
and are still in print as the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers.’
One such saying has a
significant overlap with today’s Gospel reading: ‘Stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything.’
The idea being that being in conversation with God through prayer will teach us
everything we need to know. For this reason, when he was interviewed recently
by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness would he go to for Lent if he could
be taken any where in world, Bishop Stephen replied that he would stay in his
own living room. The location for our prayer is not the main point (although
quiet and privacy can help); instead the point is the quality and depth of our
prayer.
Having said that, the
Celtic Church has given us a model for the precise opposite; integrating prayer
into our daily lives. Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found
in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, which can
blessed if we see God in our tasks and undertake our tasks as an act of worship
to God.
This tradition was
particularly strong in Gaelic countries and in the late 19th century Alexander Carmichael collected a number of the prayers and poems together in a book
called the ‘Carmina Gadelica’
which ‘abounds with prayers invoking God’s
blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and
preparing for bed.’ In more recent years, equivalent
contemporary prayers have been written covering every aspect of daily life from
turning on a computer to attending meetings, driving a car, stopping for a
lunchbreak, and so on.
Some of the most
visionary and passionate prayer in the history of the Church derived from the
renewal of the Carmelite Order undertaken by St Teresa of Avila and St John ofthe Cross. Through quiet prayer, resting in contemplation of God which involved
forgetting all earthly things, these attained occasionally prayers of union in
which their whole being was absorbed in God.
They frequently
described these experiences in terms of the union of lovers in marriage. St
John, in particular, described in great poetry the experience of feeling
abandoned by God which he described as the dark night of the soul. Their
writings can help us understand those times when we feel God is very distant
from us as well as those times when we feel an intimate closeness.
St Ignatius of Loyola
devised a series of prayer exercises which many have found particularly helpful
in the development of their prayer life. The Examen is a daily process for
reflecting on the events of the day in order to detect God’s
presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen begins with prayer for
light then continues through thanksgiving, reviewing our feelings and focus
before concluding with future appointments and the Lord’s
Prayer.
Ignatius’
Spiritual Exercises are a compilation of meditations, prayers and contemplative
practices developed to help people deepen their relationship with God. These
are divided into four weeks; not seven day weeks but stages on our spiritual
journey. Week 1 involves reflection on our lives in light of God’s
boundless love for us. Week 2 involves imagining ourselves as Christ’s
disciples as we reflect on the Gospel stories. Week 3 is meditation on the Last
Supper, Christ’s passion and death, while Week 4 is
meditation on the resurrection.
These are just some
of the resources for prayer which can be found in the Christian tradition and
which are available to all of us as we seek to go deeper into God this Lent. These
resources can be found in books, through retreats, and by using online
meditations. It is possible to travel to centres of prayer or to the world’s
deserts and wildernesses in order to learn to pray in some of these ways. But
we don’t have to! Like Bishop Stephen, we
could take to heart the teachings of the Desert Fathers to stay in our cell and
our cell will teach us everything. Our cell can be our own front room. If we
use it for committed, regular prayer this Lent then like the saints, monks and
mystics about whom we have thought this evening, we can go deeper into God.
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