Nazareth Community: Everyday reflections

Two initial meetings have been held in recent months to move towards the formation of a Nazareth Community for South Essex. At the first, in December, information was shared about the history of the Nazareth Community and the 7 S's that form its rule of life. Then those present experienced Lectio Divina in a listening group. Today, we began working on our individual rules of life using the 7 S's, had a time of reflection on a Nazareth letter, and shared a Bread for the World Eucharist together.

In today's Bread for the World service, I shared the following reflection:

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. 

How can we do this? In the paraphrase of Matthew 6. 34 from The Message, we hear Jesus say: “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying in Matthew 6. 34 and also in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 – 34.

One of the ways, I would suggest is that we use all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. The Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary events and tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every event or task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam, who has written many contemporary prayers in this style, says that: “Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

Other examples of similar styles of prayer include, Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Gaelic prayers and poems collected in the late 19th century, which “abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.” Many of George Herbert’s poems use everyday imagery (mainly church-based as he was also a priest) and are based on the idea that God is found everywhere within his world. People like Ray Simpson and Ruth Burgess have provided series of contemporary blessings for everyday life covering computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off and all sorts of life situations from leaving school and a girl’s first period to divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Similarly, Martin Wallace suggests that: “Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see.” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994) He wants to encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

One helpful way of beginning to do this is to identify the times and spaces in your normal day when you could take time to pray in this way. Before ordination, when I worked in Central London I used to use my walk to and from the tube station in this way and also had a prayer on my PC that I would pray as I ate lunch at my desk. As a result, since being ordained I have been sending emails to working people in the congregation of which I have been part with a brief reflection and prayer that they can use in these ways.

If you would like to pay more attention to events in this way, why not start by making a list of all the things that you see and do in a typical day? Then think how you could use these to reflect and pray. Then, as Martin Wallace suggests, you might like to try writing your own prayer, reflection or blessing using some of these things as your starting point.

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Peter Mayer - Holy Now.

Tuning in to God in prayer

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

Praying is like being a “ham” radio operator. Amateur or “ham” radio operators use radio frequencies which allow them to talk to people all over the world from right where they are in their homes.

Hearing and talking to people around the world via "ham" radio is not as simple as picking up the phone, dialling their number and talking away, instead you have to tune into the correct frequency, hope that you can hear the other person, hope that they can hear you and hope that the signal doesn't fade away.

A radio frequency is the number of times a radio wave gets repeated at a specific modulation. We are able to receive a radio station as long as we stay within the designated frequency.

Something similar happens with prayer and, in this story (1 Samuel 3.1-10, 11-20), we see that Samuel learns to tune himself in to the “God” channel in such a way that he can regularly hear from God. 

The story starts in a place and time where the people of God rarely hear from God - “In those days, when the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under the direction of Eli, there were very few messages from the Lord, and visions from him were quite rare.” The problem though did not lie with God, because God is always communicating – always sending messages to human beings. No, the problem was that the people had stopped listening. They weren’t tuned in to the “God” channel and instead were listening to other channels and on other frequencies.

This can be the case for us too. One way of thinking about what happens when people become Christians is that they have retuned their minds and spirits so that instead of listening on the selfish, self-centred frequencies to which we are naturally tuned in, they have retuned so that they are now listening to God.

Eli tells Samuel to say to God, “Speak; your servant is listening.” For Samuel to say, “Speak” means that he has an attitude of expectancy that God will speak and to say, “your servant is listening” means that he has an attitude of attentiveness and willingness to act on what he hears from God. These are the attitudes that we need if we are to hear frequently from God – expectation that he will speak, attentiveness to what he says, and the readiness to take to heart and act on what he says.

The Bible suggests that God speaks in a myriad of different ways: through nature, through other people, through scripture, through everyday tasks and actions, through thoughts and ideas, through dreams and visions, through prayer, through worship, through inspired languages, through circumstances, through signs. The list could go on and on. Some of the ways in which he speaks seem to us to be supernatural and others very ordinary. It doesn’t matter how we hear him it just matters that we do.

One way in which we can do this is to consciously try to reflect on what we see, hear and do in the course of our daily lives. The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. The implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection.

This is a style of prayer that may go back at least to the Celtic Christians. They had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

Bishop Martin Wallace, who has written many contemporary prayers in a Celtic style, says that: “Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets ... chatting about the events of the day and the images we see” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994). As a result, he encourages us to “chat with God ... bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of … life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

When we do this, we are tuned in to God as Samuel learnt to be and what was said of Samuel may also be said of us: “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him … [and] continued to reveal himself … to Samuel.” May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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The Moody Blues - Minstrel's Song.

Journeys, conversations & epiphanies

Here's my reflection for tonight's Choral Evensong at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

In the English language we have many words and phrases that use the metaphor of a journey for aspects of our lives. When babies are born we say that they have arrived. When we have a big decision in front of us, we say we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. When we are unsure what to do next in our lives we say we are at a crossroads and don’t know which way to go or we might say that our life has no direction and we don’t know where we are heading. The words and phrases we use suggest that we think of life is being like a journey filled with lessons, hardships, heartaches, joys, celebrations and special moments that will ultimately lead us to our destination in life. The road will not always be smooth and throughout our travels we will be confronted with many situations, some joyful and others filled with heartache. How we react often determines what the rest of our journey through life will be like.

All of this means that thinking of our journey through life as a Pilgrimage can be a helpful reflection. Pilgrimages provide an opportunity to meet people, make friends, and reflect on the journey of our lives and on our journey homewards to God. The Emmaus story (Luke 24. 13-35) tells us that Jesus, through his Spirit, wants to join us on our pilgrimage or journey through life.

On the night before he died Jesus told his disciples, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’? Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.’ He explained that he had not said these things to you at the beginning, because he was then with them. Now, however, he was going to the Father who had sent him and because he was going away, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit would come to them. The Holy Spirit, whom the Father was going to send in Jesus’ name, would teach them everything, and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them.

All of that began to happen on the Emmaus Road. The disciples were in pain because of the events of Good Friday. They didn’t understand what had happened and couldn’t believe that Jesus was anything other than well and truly dead. Jesus joined their conversation and walked with them while they were going in the wrong direction. He listened to them before he spoke. His first question was one of open vulnerability to their agenda: "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" In response to their questions and accounts of what had happened he then broke open the scriptures, doing the work of the Spirit by teaching them the things written about him in the scriptures and reminding them of all that he had said to them. Once that happened their pain was turned to joy as they recognised Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Their hearts burned with excitement and their eyes were opened by the breaking open of the scriptures and by the breaking of the bread. They then returned to Jerusalem to tell others as they couldn’t wait to share the good news they had received.

Jesus’ promise to his disciples at the Last Supper was that all these things would also happen for us because, following his resurrection and ascension, he would send his Spirit to meet us and join us and walk with us on our life journey, just as he did for these two disciples on the Emmaus Road. Whatever the terrain of our life-journey, we can walk it in the company of the resurrected Jesus, through his Spirit.

Jesus is the Way to the Father, as he said to his disciples at the Last Supper. He is the Way - the style - in which we travel as we seek to live out his Way of Love. He is the Way - the direction - of our travel, the one who points us towards abundant eternal life and he is the Way - the road - on which we travel, just like the Prodigal Son we can return home to God the Father because Jesus laid down his life to make that homecoming possible. Because Jesus has walked the Way before us, so we can now follow in his footsteps.

Martin Wallace, the former Bishop of Selby, has suggested that: ‘Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see’ (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994). Therefore, he encourages us to ‘chat with God’, as the disciples did on the Emmaus Road, ‘bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of … life’ and then, as we walk down our street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till to use these thoughts and ideas in order to pray.

When we do so, we will begin to have the same experience as the two disciples had when Jesus broke bread. At the heart of their story and journey is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because it is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised as something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is.

When our eyes are suddenly opened in this way to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary, it is called an epiphany. An epiphany happens when an everyday reality becomes charged with spiritual significance. Epiphanies are those light-bulb moments when the penny drops, everything clicks into place and understanding comes.

That is what happened to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road, all that Jesus had said to them and done with them suddenly made sense and was useful to them because the Spirit had come and brought clarity and revelation in an epiphany. That is what Jesus had promised would happen. That is the work which the Holy Spirit comes to do in our lives. Jesus told his disciples that when the Spirit came he would lead them into all truth. In other words, it is when the Spirit comes that we experience that sense of clarity, of understanding, of coming together, of rightness, and things making sense of which we have been speaking.

That doesn’t mean that everything works out and life becomes easy – Jesus’ disciples (as a whole) were equipped by the Spirit to take the message of Jesus to the whole world and as a result they faced riots, shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, and martyrdom. A Spirit-filled Christian life is always a challenge but when the Spirit comes that’s when we experience a sense of meaning and purpose – of epiphany - that transforms the difficulties of the present because we know that the risen Jesus, through his Spirit, is with us in it all and is always with us on our journey through life.

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Herbert Howells - Te Deum.

Paying Attention: Events

Here is my first address from the Silent Retreat at the Retreat House, Pleshey, organised for the communities of St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Stephen Walbrook. Entitled 'Paying Attention', we are exploring ways of paying attention to people, creation, events, emotions, absence and mystery. Earlier, at St Martin's, I spoke about paying attention in terms of the Arts.

Paying Attention: Events

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. How can we do this?

One of the ways, I would suggest is that we use all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. The Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary events and tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every event or task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam, who has written many contemporary prayers in this style, says that: “Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

Other examples of similar styles of prayer include, Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Gaelic prayers and poems collected in the late 19th century, which “abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.” Many of George Herbert’s poems use everyday imagery (mainly church-based as he was also a priest) and are based on the idea that God is found everywhere within his world. People like Ray Simpson and Ruth Burgess have provided series of contemporary blessings for everyday life covering computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off and all sorts of life situations from leaving school and a girl’s first period to divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Similarly, Martin Wallace suggests that: “Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see.” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994) He wants to encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

One helpful way of beginning to do this is to identify the times and spaces in your normal day when you could take time to pray in this way. Before ordination, when I worked in Central London I used to use my walk to and from the tube station in this way and also had a prayer on my PC that I would pray as I ate lunch at my desk. As a result, since being ordained I have been sending emails to working people in the congregation of which I have been part with a brief reflection and prayer that they can use in these ways.

If you would like to pay more attention to events in this way, why not start by making a list of all the things that you see and do in a typical day? Then think how you could use these to reflect and pray. Then, as Martin Wallace suggests, you might like to try writing your own prayer, reflection or blessing using some of these things as your starting point.

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The Jam - News Of The World.

Past Life - Present Mission (4)

Chapter 3: Christian life and mission in the light of Celtic Christianity

St Edmunds Tyseley

Tyseley is a large geographical area in East Birmingham, 2½ miles from the city centre, known as ‘the forgotten triangle’. It is an older working-class area of mixed residential and industrial land use with high proportions of minority ethnic people together with a rapidly increasing young family population with a high birth rate. Social needs in Tyseley included high levels of unemployment, large numbers of elder people and lone parents, a lack of youth facilities, congested roads and heavy industrial traffic, a polluted atmosphere, high levels of illness, and few open or play spaces. On my arrival at St Edmunds in 1989, a social worker told me:

“The thing you will soon discover about Tyseley people is that they have no hope. If they are middle-aged and unemployed they will never be employed again. What they have got in life now, won’t really be added to before they eventually die.”

The Church buildings and site were in need of refurbishment although the facilities were used by the community and the Church members viewed themselves as being an extended Christian family committed to being a church for their community. Change occurred in our situation as major building works were financed and completed and through an experimental Neighbourhood Project, StEdicare – Tyseley. The building works and StEdicare created an environment where, by the mid 1990s, we were motivated to search for a fresh and relevant set of Christian mission principles that applied both to our own lifestyle and were relevant to the local community. The use of Celtic materials in worship and study were a key part of developing this fresh approach.

Using the Biblical themes

Mitton’s biblical themes were used by three housegroups and several individuals (45 starters, 40 completers) as a set of notes with the following format:

1. Consider an historical story about one or more of the Celtic Saints which illustrates each Biblical theme.

2. Interpret the story and its theme and apply it to the Church of today.

3. Read a relevant Bible Passage for each theme.

4. Discuss questions arising from the text.

5. Conclude with prayer.

When each group had finished studying the material I visited them and discussed their response. Behind my approach lay the question: “Is it possible for an ancient form of indigenous Christianity to act as an important guide line for Christians living and mission in a deprived UPA 1500 years later?”

Responses

Category 1 responses: This included the majority of participants (a total of 32 out of 40), most of whom were long-term residents of Tyseley. As a group, Category 1 people were untroubled and perhaps unaware that there could be a problem in accepting, that an ancient, indigenous, Christian approach could be relevant to their own spiritual growth and awareness. In general they set aside what one might call the structural and historic differences between rural, agrarian people and themselves as urban dwellers immersed in the culture of Tyseley and St. Edmund’s Church. They were prepared to consider what the biblical theme itself offered. As a part of that, they accepted themes and aspects of themes that affirmed existing Christian life-style, and any challenge toward new ways for them, to live out that theme.

Category 1 people coped with the ‘Woven Cord’ programme notes through the strength of the story approach, and the sense of concreteness it brought to their discussions. The success and centrality of the story approach with its visual and descriptive imagery should not be lost sight of. Neither should the use of biographical content and illustrative testimony by group members, which became a positive part of their own involvement with the notes. The notes were totally focussed on examples of Celtic Christian principles and practices. So this was what participants accepted and applied to their lives. Equally themes which were not accepted reflect positive decisions as these emerged from the exploratory process they had practised.

People in this first category were warmed by stories of Celtic Christians and connected with them at a feeling level.

Category 2 responses: These people were a minority (8) of participants in the ‘Woven Cord’ programme. Category 2 people found the issue of responding to cultural knowledge and life style from an ancient Christian people somewhat difficult. They perceived the Celtic way to be ‘romantic’ and rural and, therefore, irrelevant. Their reasoning was academic and the question arose as to whether the use of ‘non-academic’ faculties such as intuition, story and art was viewed as a threat.

This also raised the question, are well-educated Christians who occupy a high social class but choose to live in or near a UPA and worship within it, less motivated to consider alternative Christian life-styles than the ones they currently live out? Whilst this is merely a possibility it could be relevant to the way mission was planned and structured in UPA parishes. After a lifetime’s involvement in working class areas, I am of the view that well-educated, professional people are needed to worship and live in UPAs. They have lots of gifts to offer, but the essential question is how effectively they relate to Christian living and life-style of local people who are long-term residents. In this instance the two categories seemed to be within two different worlds.

I asked myself the question, why were the Category 2 people so unaccepting of the Celtic themes? Various possibilities seemed relevant: What was their commitment to living in a UPA, was it for ‘Romantic’ reasons? Was their response related to the kind of worldview they implicitly accepted, which (perhaps) made receptivity to the past difficult? What theological position had they adopted with respect to tradition? Had they thought through the question of ancient text (the Bible) or story (the Celtic) in relation to contemporary life? Did they assume the Biblical text transcends the historical and cultural in a way which other texts do not?

Themes that resonated

The following are themes that particularly resonated with the Category 1 participants. They are themes that were transposed directly into their approach to Christian living, and are not presented in any particular order:

• The importance of authenticity, simplicity of life-style and holiness within daily Christian living.
• The centrality of the Bible and the commitment to living out its teaching in a direct manner.
• The acceptance of the presence of illness, death and dying and the significance of faith in relation to that awareness. ‘Life’ beyond the grave.
• The sense of unity with the world of creation.
• The reality of spiritual powers, including those of evil, and the fact of spiritual battle.
• The place, work and gifts of the Holy Spirit...Discernment, prophecy and healing.
• Acceptance of the ministry of women, and the place of children within the Christian setting.
• The importance of prayer in the daily life and worship of Christians.

Other themes that strongly emerged included:

• The possibility of experiencing peace, quietness of spirit and hope in the living out of faith.
• The sense of freedom in Christian living and worship.
• The awareness of Christian belonging and sharing faith with others.

Themes that did not resonate

In the main these were as follows:

• Celibacy seemed to be regarded as irrelevant to their lives. In terms of gender, their view and assumption was the acceptance of heterosexual family life as being the norm. 
• Asceticism was regarded as strange and irrelevant. They were aware of the challenge toward discipleship but now saw that in terms of direct Christian living within their daily lives. Asceticism was not applicable to their view of growing in holiness. 
• Poverty was a matter most knew something about. For them it had not involved choice. As a factor that was chosen as part of a Celt’s life of faith, it did not appeal to participants in the ‘Woven Cord’ programme. 
• Christian Monastic Community was ignored as significant to their lives. In general the response of participants was biased towards direct examples of Christian living as demonstrated in the ‘story’ approach. This particular theme illustrated their unreadiness to approach issues from the basis of Institutional life.
• Peregrinatio was discussed with interest and felt to be Biblical. We have already established that with most themes that resonated, they were then applied directly to people’s lives, especially any scriptural teaching. The fact this theme did not resonate related to the lack of feasibility for them to practice peregrinatio i.e. it was a Celtic Christian practice that did not transpose into their social structure. The fact it did not resonate, thereby showed the critical ability of Category 1 participants to show that not everything about Celtic Christianity was suitable for them.

The common denominator in these negative responses was that even where they were individual practices, they had a particular link with the institutional structure of the Celtic Church. As a result, there was not the same acceptance by the Category 1 participants.

Key factors

The key factors which made these themes of significant meaning were:

• People’s identity and self-image: Many UPA Christian people do not have a strong identity or confident self-image in relation to the wider society. They are not confident about many roles. Roles that for example, most middle-class people are automatically prepared for by family and life experience. In the Christian context of St. Edmund Tyseley that included such common roles as: becoming a Sunday School Teacher; taking a Bible reading in a Church Service; or joining a visiting team. All of the themes that resonated had this linking strength. Acceptance of the themes aided that person’s identity and self-image as a Christian believer.
• Direct applicability to everyday Christian life as a UPA person: The social context for the target group of Tyseley residents was one of ‘deprivation’ and marginalisation from affluent Britain. Within the Church context of St. Edmund’s there had been an absence of ‘hope’. The movement into using Celtic Christian principles and practices as a set of guide lines for spiritual growth within the Church reinforced in the mid 1990’s, a movement away from this no hope perception for the individual and the Church. As the ‘Woven Cord’ programme progressed there was an increasing awareness of the presence of God, a God who was at the centre of the new openness to directly apply the practice of Celtic spiritual material into daily living. The story of the way Celtic Christians saw and lived out their faith became relevant and accessible to participants. The manner in which this happened, suggested that Category 1 participant’s perception of renewed Christian living did not depend on institutional or social class definitions of the correct type of image or behaviour. One of the more significant changes in absorbing Celtic Christian practice, was the move away from coming to Church “to get your batteries charged” – to viewing Christian living as a daily affair involving prayer, worship and service to others. The themes that resonated had this “direct applicability” element to the participant’s everyday Christian life as a UPA person.
• Need for a sense of belonging and to find their Christian roots: Within UPAs’ there is usually found a locality-based, neighbourhood sense of community. Social networks are often locally based also. This, together with family and friendship networks, link strongly into a person’s identity and self-image. Tyseley has been very much a white community with a great emphasis on extended families. That structure is now in rapid change into a multi-ethnic community, surrounded by the influence of contemporary social values and rapid social change. This means there are areas of new vulnerability within the local neighbourhood, within family, Church life and for the individual. The whole structure of belonging and the sense of roots has been dislocated through rapid social change. It is hardly surprising that for Christian UPA believers, anything that helps their sense of belonging and discovery of significant roots is welcomed. This programme and its Celtic Christian backcloth together with the themes that resonated, strengthened the participants sense of belonging to each other and to God through Christ. Their sense of dignity and worth as a child of God gained new roots through their identity with Celtic Christians. A significant factor in this was that their faith was no longer to be so determined by their UPA human context or definitions about them stemming from social class attitudes and behaviour.

In the earlier Chapters I noted two developmental stages in the evolution of Celtic Christianity. First, the age of the Sancti, where there was a major focus on the Saints of the 4th-6th centuries AD. These were the men who were the Christian equivalent of the Celtic war-lord heroes of which Ninian, Patrick and Columba were distinguished examples. Second, this was followed by the movement into structures that were to characterise the Celtic Church, in particular monasticism and Peregrinatio from the early 6th Century onwards. The Themes that resonated with UPA people were particularly illustrated by stories from the first time period of the Celtic Sancti. The Themes that were rejected or ignored, were generally related to the period when the focus was upon the characteristic structures found within Celtic Christianity and its practice. In terms of the wider study of Celtic Christianity, both divisions include major themes. For future programmes the different contemporary contexts within which such themes may be placed, will help to determine whether they are regarded as major or minor Themes.

Implications for developing future programmes

Some excellent material has surfaced in the last few years, that greatly improves the position. This comes, for example, from the Rev. Martin Wallace who initially published a series of low cost, samizdat publications based on Celtic style talks given at St. Peter’s Chapel, Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex. This was the Church St. Cedd built in 654 AD. Wallace’s basic value in writing such books was to “combine the lives of the Saints together with radical lessons for today.” These were followed in 1998 by Wallace’s “The Celtic Resource Book”. This excellent book uses the same type of worship resource material we used at St. Edmund’s, which included material from David Adam, the Carmina Gadelica, Wild Goose Publications (Iona), the Northumbrian Community and the like. Content is divided into sections that include: Liturgies; Prayers; Lessons from the Saints; Practical Meditation; Artistic Activities; and Going on Pilgrimage Today together with exploratory ideas on different ways of using the Resource book. Any future programmes about Celtic Christianity among UPA people would be helped by making use of Wallace’s ability to relate Celtic Spirituality into the context of modern urban living, particularly that of ‘deprived’ communities.

Learning patterns

The following were important to the way the Study developed:

• Celtic Christian prayers, poems and meditations used within Church worship from 1994.
• A series of sermons during 1996 that transposed Celtic approaches into life, living, and Christian faith within a UPA context. 
• The use of everyday objects as visual aids or as a sacramental symbol. For example: offering the congregation, after a sermon about Columba’s life and ministry, a small pebble from the beach on Iona where he landed. It was offered on condition that if accepted, the pebble would be used as a symbol for that person of a commitment to share the Good News about Jesus with others. Another image used was that of the ‘Open Gate,’ signifying movement in our Christian pilgrimage individually and as a Church.
• A series of visions that occurred at the time of a PCC Away Day in 1996 and their challenge about responding to the Spirit’s work in rebuilding Church relationships.

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David Fitzgerald & Dave Bainbridge - I Arise Today.

Prayer: tuning in to God

Praying is like being a “ham” radio operator. Amateur or “ham” radio operators use radio frequencies which allow them to talk to people all over the world from right where they are in their homes.

Hearing and talking to people around the world via "ham" radio is not as simple as picking up the phone, dialling their number and talking away, instead you have to tune into the correct frequency, hope that you can hear the other person, hope that they can hear you and hope that the signal doesn't fade away.

A radio frequency is the number of times a radio wave gets repeated at a specific modulation. We are able to receive a radio station as long as we stay within the designated frequency.

Something similar happens with prayer and in this story (1 Samuel 3. 1 - 21) we see Samuel learning to tune himself in to the “God” channel in such a way that he can regularly hear from God. The story starts in a place and time where the people of God rarely hear from God -  “In those days, when the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under the direction of Eli, there were very few messages from the Lord, and visions from him were quite rare.”

The problem though, I suggest, did not lie with God, because God is always communicating – always sending messages to human beings. No, the problem wasn’t that God had stopped speaking; the problem was that the people had stopped listening. They weren’t tuned in to the “God” channel and instead were listening to other channels and on other frequencies.

In fact this is true for us too. One way of thinking about what happens when people become Christians is that they have retuned their minds and spirits so that instead of listening on the selfish, self-centred frequencies to which we are naturally tuned in, we have retuned so that we are now listening to God.

Eli tells Samuel to say to God, “Speak; your servant is listening.” For Samuel to say, “Speak” means that he has an attitude of expectancy that God will speak and to say, “your servant is listening” means that he has an attitude of attentiveness and willing to act on what he hears from God. These are the attitudes that we need if we are to hear frequently from God – expectation that he will speak, attentiveness to what he says, and the readiness to take to heart and act on what he says.

The Bible suggests that God speaks in a myriad of different ways: through nature, through other people, through scripture, through everyday tasks and actions, through thoughts and ideas, through dreams and visions, through prayer, through worship, through inspired languages, through circumstances, through signs. The list could go on and on. Some of the ways in which he speaks seem to us to be supernatural and others very ordinary. It doesn’t matter how we hear him, it just matters that we do.

One way in which we can do this is to consciously try to reflect on what we see, hear and do in the course of our daily lives. The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things.

Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that may go back at least to the Celtic Christians. They had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam, who has written many contemporary prayers in a Celtic style, says that:

“Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

We know that ordinary people in Scotland were doing this daily in the late 19^th century, and probably much earlier too, because Alexander Carmichael collected their Gaelic prayers and poems 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.” More recently a number of book have been written which provide contemporary prayers and blessings for all aspects of everyday life; everything from computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off to all sorts of life situations including leaving school, divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Bishop Martin Wallace has said that:

“Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994).

As a result, he wants to encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

When we do this we are tuned in to God as Samuel learnt to be and what was said of Samuel may also be said of us: “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him … [and] continued to reveal himself … to Samuel.”

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Aretha Franklin - Are You Sure?

Of beauty or affirmation

Sam Norton recently posted on the subject of beauty and his post got me thinking about the extent to which beauty can be identified or defined. The proverb, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' suggests that beauty is entirely subjective. Clearly collective ideas of beauty can be formed, yet these can also be iniquitous, as with ’size zero’ in the fashion industry and the way in which that perception of beauty pressurises people into anorexia and bulimia.

One of the fascinating things about contemporary art is the way in which it often finds beauty in the throw-away, the ready-made, the hidden or disregarded e.g. Martin Creed’s Work No. 88 - a crumpled ball of paper. In a culture of detritus, American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball uncovers heartbreaking beauty in garbage with a scene in which a crummy old plastic bag floats in the wind above a dirty sidewalk.

My friend, Alan Stewart, in his ‘Icons or Eyesores’ presentation on spirituality in contemporary art shows people a photo of a sepia-tinged crucifix. Most people quite like it until they are told that it is ‘Piss Christ’ by Andres Serrano and that the crucifix is submerged in the artist’s urine. Serrano has said that the image is about the commercialisation of religious iconography (a critique of Christian kitsch!) but Alan sees it as a depiction of the incarnation, with God coming into the detritus and waste of human life, and that, it seems to me, is profoundly beautiful.

The incarnation is particularly relevant to this debate because, while in no sense a conventionally beautiful act (see Philippians 2. 6-8), it is the ultimate affirmative act based on the understanding that nothing is lost and everything can be redeemed. For this reason, I think that affirmation is a more helpful concept to us than beauty as, rather than separating out the beautiful from the ugly as in conceptions of beauty, affirmation seeks to see the image of God in all things.

This is the approach of Charles Williams who, in The Descent of the Dove, writes this:

"... the Incarnation ... produces a phrase which is the very maxim of the Affirmative Way: "Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by taking of the manhood into God." And not only of the particular religious Way, but of all progress of all affirmations: it is the actual manhood which is to be carried on, and not the height which is to be brought down. All images are, in their degree to be carried on; mind is never to put off matter; all experience is to be gathered in."

Christine Mary Hearn notes that the Way of Affirmation holds that "God is manifest in many things and can be known through these things" as in Psalm 19. 1: 'the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament his handiwork.' She notes too that it is the way of poets as was the case with Anne Ridler whose "devoted Anglicanism" was inspired by this philosophy found in her friend Charles Williams and the 17th-century poet Thomas Traherne. The Way of Affirmation should have particular resonance for Anglicans as the Genius of Anglicanism (greatly under strain in its present divisions) is its affirmation of both Catholicism and Protestantism.

Philippians 4.8 - "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things" - encourages us to follow the Affirmative Way. No criteria is outlined for these categories, leaving us to interpret them for ourselves, but the assumption is made that if we seek such things we will find them.   

Simone Weil sets out a methodology for the Affirmative Way when she writes that in order "to receive in its naked truth" the object which is to penetrate our mind, "our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything" and that such "absolute unmixed attention is prayer." Such a way of praying underpins much of the contemporary spirituality which draws on perceptions of Celtic Christianity. David Adam, for example, writes that:

“Much of Celtic prayer spoke naturally to God in the working place of life. There was no false division into sacred and secular. God pervaded all and was to be met in their daily work and travels. If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)

Other examples of similar styles of prayer include, Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Gaelic prayers and poems collected in the late 19th century, which “abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.” Many of George Herbert’s poems use everyday imagery (mainly church-based as he was also a priest) and are based on the idea that God is found everywhere within his world. Ray Simpson and Ruth Burgess have provided series of contemporary blessings for everyday life covering computers, exams, parties, pets, cars, meetings, lunchtimes, days off and all sorts of life situations from leaving school and a girl’s first period to divorce, redundancy and mid-life crises.

Martin Wallace sums up this sense of paying prayerful attention to the everyday in order to affirm God's presence in the everyday when he writes: “Just as God walked with Adam in the garden of Eden, so he now walks with us in the streets of the city chatting about the events of the day and the images we see” (City Prayers, The Canterbury Press, 1994). He encourage us to “chat with God in the city, bouncing ideas together with him, between the truths of the Bible and the truths of urban life” and, “as you walk down your street, wait for the lift, or fumble for change at the cash-till … to construct your own prayers of urban imagery.”

Viewed in this way, Work No. 88 and the plastic bag scene from American Beauty are examples of the kind of prayerful attention which characterises the Way of Affirmation.
 
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Van Morrison - In The Garden.

c4m webpage update (24)

This week has seen a number of posts appearing on the commission4mission webpage. Firstly, our newest member, Sarah Ollerenshaw, has been profiled and Sarah's current exhibition, a two woman show at the Seascape Gallery in Goring, was featured. Celia Ward's current exhibition entitled Wildlife, myth & folklore was also featured, as was my latest art project which involves drawing, photographing and painting on a monthly basis the current regeneration at Gants Hill together with the local Vicar, Fr. Benjamin Wallace. Finally, there are photos of our latest exhibition at All Saints Goodmayes which opens tomorrow and can be viewed between 10.00am and 4.00pm until Sunday 18th October.

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M. Ward - Story of an Artist.