Prayer: Away from others and in secret

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

When Jesus prayed on this occasion, he went to a dark, deserted place (Mark 1.29-39). When he taught his disciples about prayer, he taught them to pray in secret with the door closed so they couldn’t be seen by others (Matthew 6.5-6).

While there is a place for public prayer, personal prayer is not for public consumption as it is something that happens directly between ourselves and God. In addition, as we see in this story of Jesus’ ministry, it is personal prayer undertaken in secret, hidden places that is what fuels public ministry.

Jesus knew that he could not carry out his public ministry without time spent in private prayer, that is why he gets up early in the morning and goes to a quiet place away from others in order to pray. It is not important that we imitate Jesus in the specifics of when and where he prays but it is important that we prioritise prayer in the way that he does and find our own times for private prayer as well as finding our own hidden, secret places in which to pray.

So, reflect for a moment on the times and places where you are able to pray.

A saying that has come to us from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, hermits, monks and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD, is this: ‘Stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything’. The idea is that being in conversation with God through prayer will teach us everything we need to know. For this reason, when he was interviewed once by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness he would go to for Lent if he could be taken anywhere in world, the Archbishop of York replied that he would stay in his own living room. The location for our prayer is not the main point (although quiet and privacy will help); instead, the point is the quality and depth of our prayer.

From the mid-1920s onwards, Evelyn Underhill became highly-regarded as a retreat conductor and an influential spiritual director. Much of her ministry was undertaken at our own Diocesan Retreat House in Pleshey.

In her book on The Fruits of The Spirit, she wrote, in relation to retreats, about Jesus’ injunction to shut the door and pray in secret:

“Christ, who so seldom gave detailed instruction about anything, did give some detailed instruction of that … recollection which is the essential condition of real prayer, real communion with God.

"When you pray, go into a room by yourself - and shut the door." I think we can almost see the smile with which He said those three words, and those three words define what we have to try to do. Anyone can retire into a quiet place and have a thoroughly unquiet time in it - but that is not … the shutting of the door …

Shut the door. It is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Nearly everyone pulls it to and leaves it slightly ajar so that a whistling draught comes in from the outer world, with reminders of all the worries, interests, conflicts, joys and sorrows of daily life.

But Christ said shut and He meant shut. A complete barrier deliberately set up, with you on one side alone with God and everything else without exception on the other side. The voice of God is very gentle; we cannot hear it if we let other voices compete. It is no use at all to enter that room, that inner sanctuary, clutching the daily paper, the reports of all the societies you support, your engagement book and a large bundle of personal correspondence. All these must be left outside.

The object … is not intercession or self-exploration, but such communion with Him as shall afterwards make you more powerful in intercession; such self loss in Him as shall heal your wounds by new contact with His life and love.”

Jesus’ words were addressed to ordinary people going about their everyday lives, so his call to shut the door when praying was for each time we pray. Seeking the opportunity of being alone with God and attending to God in order that we may do His will better in our everyday lives was intended by Jesus as a regular experience. The distractions Evelyn Underhill notes are with us each time we pray. We need to face them each time we pray. Jesus said, ‘whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ Our reward will be, as Evelyn Underhill wrote, ‘real communion with God.’

So, reflect again for a moment on the times and places where you are able to genuinely shut the door and be in quiet and in peace as you pray.

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Lavine Hudson - Create In Me.

Lent: A course in Christian meditation

Here's the sermon I have shared at St Andrew's Wickford and St Mary's Runwell today as part of our Ash Wednesday Eucharist's with the Imposition of Ashes:

When Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, 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.

Archbishop 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 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.

This Lent we are essentially going to run a course on Christian meditation through our Lent Course ‘Ways to Pray’. Our five-week course explores some different ways of praying: Being Still with God, Prayer Through the Day, Using the Imagination, Multi-sensory prayer, Using Art and Images. The course gives 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. Our Quiet Day, here at St Mary’s, on 4 March will also do more of the same. Here are some others ideas and resources too …

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 once interviewed by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness would he go to for Lent if he could be taken anywhere in world, Archbishop 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 of the 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 (some of which we explore in our Lent Course) 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 Archbishop 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, we can go deeper into God.

Jesus said: ‘… go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.’

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Iona - Today.

Paying attention: Ethics

"All this should make us think a bit harder about how we as Christians approach the whole business of ethics. . . . if the desert literature is right, then we all need training in listening and attending almost more than anything else. Unless we are capable of patience before each other, before the mysteriousness of each other, it’s very unlikely that we will do God’s will with any kind of fullness. Without a basic education in attention, no deeply ethical behavior is really going to be possible; we may only keep the rules and do what is technically and externally the right thing. but that 'doing the right thing' will not be grounded yet in who we are, in the person God wants us to become, and it may not survive stress and temptation. It may also be quite capable of existing alongside attitudes and habits dangerous to ourselves and each other; it may not bring us life with and through the neighbour. Our Christian codes of behaviour quite rightly tell us that some sorts of action are always wrong - torture or fraud, killing the innocents or the unborn, sexual violence and infidelity - but to see why that is so requires us to go back a step or two to see why this or that action is bound to speak of inattention, why this or that action makes it impossible to listen for the word in another person. Unless we can grasp something of that, our ethics will never really be integrated with our search and our prayer for holy life in community."

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the desert

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Jennifer Warnes - Joan Of Arc.

Silence & Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert

The 4th and 5th century Desert Fathers and Mothers offer a message of profound simplicity and depth. At St Martin-in-the-Fields we are journeying together into their desert of wisdom this Lent to rediscover some of the most vital truths about our lives and faith.

Each Wednesday in Lent there is the invitation to join us for our Bread for the World informal Eucharist where we take the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers as the theme for reflection. This is followed by a simple Lenten supper before we divide into groups to share thoughts and our own responses to this desert wisdom.

We are using former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' book Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert as our guide. With him we are exploring the extraordinary wisdom that comes with this desert spirituality, much of which resonates so strongly with aspects of our own modern spiritual search.

• How can we discover the truth about ourselves?
• How can we live in relationship with others?
• What does the desert say about recognising our priorities?
• How do we learn to pray?
• How can we create a fearless community?

Yesterday, I led our reflections with the following thoughts:

“… two large boats floating on the river were shown to him. In one of them sat Abba Arsenius and the Holy Spirit of God in complete silence. And in the other boat was Abba Moses, with the angels of God; they were all eating honey cakes.”

So we come to the story which gives this book its title. A man visits the desert fathers and experiences two approaches to spirituality. One involves abstinence, particularly from speech (silence), while the other involves an open welcome, enjoyment of company and the eating of honey cakes. The man expresses a preference for the latter, which leads another to question how such different paths to God can exist. He then receives a vision in which God accepts both.

Rowan Williams explores this story in terms of our different vocations. I would like to talk about it in terms of the two different ways to God that the story juxtaposes.

In one we find God in the world around of us - the people, places, creatures and creations. In addition we use these things as visual or lingual images which reveal aspects of God to us. This is an affirmative way based on the understanding that God's creation is good and that something of the creator can be seen in the creation. This is a way of abundance and of the Arts, where multiple images and experiences build up a composite picture of God. This is the way of Abba Moses in the boat together with honey cakes and the angels of God.

The other way is visualised by Abba Arsenius who is silent in his boat with the Holy Spirit of God. This is the way of abstinence which recognises the inadequacy of every image and word and creature and creation to show or tell us about God. God is always more than any way of describing or imaging him and, therefore, the best way to experience God as is, is to dispense with words and images altogether and go by way of silence and darkness. As a result, this way of experiencing God is known as the negative way or also, sometimes, as the dark night of the soul.

Both ways lead to God, but, as they are polar opposites, they approach God by different routes and therefore we may, at times, have to choose between them and, if we were to follow either to their conclusion, we would have to make an ultimate choice, as Abba's Arsenius and Moses seem in the story to have done. However, it is also possible to combine aspects of both approaches or to follow one way rather than the other at different seasons in our lives.

My thinking about these two ways to God has been informed by the thinking of the poet, dramatist and novelist Charles Williams. His views on these two ways have been summarised as follows:

"The Way of Affirmation consists in recognizing the immanence of God in all things, and says that appreciation of whom and what God has made may lead us to appreciation of Himself. The Way of Rejection concentrates on the transcendence of God, the recognition that God is never fully contained in His creation; it says that we must renounce all lesser images if we would apprehend His. These two Ways have been expressed by the paradox "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou," and tend generally to illustrate, respectively, Catholic or Protestant thought in their attitudes toward the use of images.

While Williams insists that a complement of both these Ways is necessary to the life of every Christian, and that none of us can walk the Kingdom's narrow road by only affirming or only rejecting ... yet he contends that Christians are usually called primarily to one Way or the other.

While both these ways are ways to God, they are also ways to understanding ourselves; in itself a necessary part of our journey towards God. The greatest commandment is to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Rowan Williams connects these things when he writes that the reason why “the desert monks and nuns valued self-awareness” was that to “be a real agent for God to connect with [our] neighbour … each of us needs to know the specific truth about himself or herself.”

These two different ways to God that we have been considering provide, as you would expect, different ways in which to encounter and understand ourselves. On the Affirmative Way, the pre-eminent metaphor may be that of light. Light enables us to see all that is around us. As a result, we can then also perceive ourselves. When we look around us and see other people, creatures and objects, we can undertake an exercise in comparing and contrasting; thinking to ourselves I’m similar to this and I’m different from that. This can take us right back to one of the creation stories in Genesis; that of Adam naming the animals. Names in ancient culture were symbols of the essence of the thing named; so, Adam looks at each creature before him sees its essence and names that characteristic. As he does so, he is himself looking for a helpmate. When he has named all the animals he has still not found his helpmate. The animals are too different to him to fulfil that role but, having encountered difference, he is then immediately able to recognise his similarity to Eve and realise that they are intended to be helpmates for each other.

These thoughts connect with the South African word ‘Ubuntu’, which essentially means ‘I am because you are’, and the phrase ‘I-Thou’ explored by the philosopher Martin Buber, who wrote about “the I-Thou relationship, where our human relationships can only be truly authentic when we open ourselves fully to the other and encounter them as whole and unique persons.” Jean Vanier, creator of the L’Arche communities, also speaks about dependency being at the heart of community and our belonging to one another. “We do not discover who we are, we do not reach true humanness,” he says, “in a solitary state; we discover it through mutual dependency, in weakness, in learning through belonging.” Similarly, St Anthony the Great said ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour’ and, as a result Rowan Williams states that “only in the relations we have with one another can the love and mercy of God appear and become effective.”

On the Negative Way, the pre-eminent metaphor for knowing ourselves may be that of silence. In silence, we hear the working of our own minds, we hear our self-justification and unmask our need to defend our territory, establish our position, and defend our ego. As Rowan Williams states, “Our words help to strengthen the illusions with which we surround, protect and comfort ourselves; without silence, we shan’t get any closer to knowing who we are before God.” Our “sense of the authentically human, depends and can only depend on the quality of our silence – the need to let go of words in certain ways, that willingness to occupy a space before God which is not a defended territory, defended against God or against anyone else. And because we occupy a space that isn’t a defended territory, it is space both for God and for each other. We are moving beyond our fascination, our hypnosis by the ideas of choice and individuality as conceived in the modern world, moving towards the possibility of a human life characterised by consistent instinctive responsiveness to the truth, acquiring an instinctive taste for truth. A taste for truth, that’s to say an appetite for what is real, so strong that it allows us constantly to keep ourselves in question, under scrutiny, not in an obsessional way but just going on asking, ‘Who is being served here? The ego or the truth?’”

Which boat are we sitting in? In which would we wish to sit? Are our personalities fundamentally compatible with sharing silence or honey cakes? Have we found ways to combine the affirmative and the negative ways or to move between the two at different times and seasons of our lives?

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Morten Lauridsen - O Magnum Mysterium.

Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert

The 4th and 5th century Desert Fathers and Mothers offer a message of profound simplicity and depth. Yesterday, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, we began to journey together into their desert of wisdom this Lent to rediscover some of the most vital truths about our lives and faith.

Each Wednesday in Lent their is the invitation to join us for our Bread for the World informal Eucharist where we take the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers as the theme for reflection. This is followed by a simple Lenten supper before we divide into groups to share thoughts and our own responses to this desert wisdom.

We are using former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' book Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert as our guide. With him we are exploring the extraordinary wisdom that comes with this desert spirituality, much of which resonates so strongly with aspects of our own modern spiritual search.

• How can we discover the truth about ourselves?
• How can we live in relationship with others?
• What does the desert say about recognising our priorities?
• How do we learn to pray?
• How can we create a fearless community?

Our reflections were led yesterday by Richard Carter. Next week Sam Wells will lead the reflection and the following week will be my turn to contribute. Katherine Hedderly and Alastair McKay will also contribute reflections.

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John Tavener - Darkness Into Light.

Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert

Each Wednesday in Lent from 17 February until 23 March we invite you to join us at St Martin-in-the-Fields for our Bread of the World, an informal Eucharist 6.30pm.

We will be taking the wisdom of the 4th-5th century desert fathers and mothers as the theme for reflection. This will be followed by a simple Lenten supper before we divide into groups to share thoughts and our response to this desert wisdom. We will be using former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ book: Silence and Honeycakes: The Wisdom of the Desert as our guide. In it he explores the extraordinary wisdom that comes from this desert spirituality much of which resonates so strongly with aspects of our won modern spiritual search:

• How can we discover the truth about ourselves?
• How can we live in relationship with others?
• What does the desert say about recognising our priorities?
• How do we learn to pray?
• How can we create a fearless community?

The desert fathers and mothers offer a message of both profound simplicity and depth. Join us as together we journey into the desert to rediscover some of the most vital truth about our lives and faith. All are welcome

The cost of Lent Study is £15 which includes a copy of the book Silence and Honeycakes (plus a recommended to donation of £2 towards the supper each week). For those who already have a copy of the book the cost of the Lent Study is £8.

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John Tavener - Eternity's Sunrise.