This our brother – 25 October 2013

John Knox was one of the great protestant reformers, along with Luther, Calvin, Zwingli – and in England, Thomas Cranmer and many others.  Those were fierce and robust years.  Right was right and wrong was wrong – and wrong, often as not, was requited with hideous penalties.  Yet, there were some issues they saw through the eyes of Christ, and in the middle of it all, John Knox wrote in the Book of Common Order for the Scottish Church, 1564, an order of worship for The Reception Again of a Forgiven Offender.  I will read it to you.

Reception back into the congregation of a forgiven offender

[From Knox’s Book of Common Order, 1564]

The Minister says to the congregation:

If we consider his fall and sin in him only, without having consideration of ourselves and of our own corruption, we shall profit nothing, for so shall we but despise our brother and flatter ourselves;   but if we shall earnestly consider what nature we bear, what corruption lurketh in it, how prone and ready every one of us is to such and greater impiety, then shall we in the sin of this our brother accuse and condemn our own sins, in his fall we shall consider and lament our sinful nature, also we shall join our repentance, tears and prayers with him and his, knowing that no flesh can be justified before God’s presence, if judgement proceed without mercy.

The Minister then turns to the penitent and says:

You have heard also the affection and care of the church towards you, their penitent brother, notwithstanding your grievous fall, to wit, that we all here present join our sins with your sin;  we all repute and esteem your fall to be our own;  we accuse ourselves no less than we accuse you;  now, finally, we join our prayers with yours, that we and you may obtain  mercy, and that by means of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Minister addresses the congregation again:

Now it only resteth that ye remit and forget all offences which ye have conceived heretofore by the sin and fall of this our brother;  accept and embrace him as a member of Christ’s body;  let no one take upon him to reproach or accuse him for any offences that before this hour he hath committed.

I really would not expect anyone outside the church to understand this.  But we do expect professed Christian believers within the church to understand and follow it.  It is our gospel.  To contemplative Christians it is simply instinctive truth.  It follows from all we encounter in Christ.  In his company our charism is understanding, mercy and love.

Pay attention – 18 October 2013

The New Testament scriptures have quite a lot to say about people of faith being awake.  Whether it’s the story of the foolish bridesmaids who were half asleep and not ready when the bridegroom showed up, or the brisk warnings in the apocalyptic passages about being alert and ready – scripture does not really permit us to hang around in a dozy frame of mind, in a comfortable religion, needing only to be spiritually entertained and mildly stimulated. 

This is certainly reflected in our practice of Christian Meditation.  As soon as we are tempted to think that this is a pleasant and welcome time of relaxation and rest, we are reminded that the point of the stillness and the silence is to facilitate attention.  We are not in a trance or a reverie – we are awake and paying attention.  Having said that, I think it does need to be added, as a simple practicality, that meditation is difficult to the point of serious distraction if one is seriously overtired or unwell, unable to stay awake. 

We pay attention to the mantra, not to analyse it, not to think about it, but as a point of focus.  It is what we return to from wandering away, a kind of personal beacon.  Jesus in the Beatitudes said that the pure in heart are blessed.  He is not talking here about moral purity, but about singleness of attention.  Purity of heart, said Kierkegaard, is to will one thing.  We are still and silent in the still and silent presence of God.  So with God we are sharing a common language.  All our chatter and all our fine intentions are stilled for the time being.  Our attention is to the gentle repetition of the mantra – and in that space, intermittent as it may be, but the best we can manage at the moment, God is able to teach us and change us, and we consent to that.  I am reminded of the words of St John of the Cross at the start of his great poem, The Dark Night -- …my house being now all stilled.

This level of attention is difficult, because we normally don’t live that way.  We make a virtue of being pulled in various ways at once, multi-tasking, we call it being busy and involved.  I saw a TV clip about the need to turn off your mobile phones in a cinema, and one youth said there was no way he would do that.  He absolutely had to remain in touch with all his clamorous world.  He might miss something.  Someone might try to get me and think I’m dead or something, he said.  Something might happen and he wouldn’t know about it.

I think it is difficult also because it is a kind of poverty.  Meditation is done with empty hands.  We are not relying on our store of knowledge or wisdom.  It is not some device or strategy for getting what we want or need.  The mantra is all we have, and our choice to pay attention to it at this time at the expense of all else.  And so, back in the Beatitudes, there is a strange resonance not only with purity of heart, but also with Jesus’s mention of the poor in spirit – theirs is the kingdom of heaven;  those who hunger and thirst for righteousness – they will be filled;  the pure in heart – they will see God.

Having faith – 11 October 2013

Diarmid MacCullogh is a historian, a church historian, a very great scholar, an Oxford don and the recipient of many academic honours, ordained deacon in the Church of England, last year knighted by the Queen.  When the time came for him to be made a priest, his homosexuality was seen as a problem, and Dr MacCullogh said: I was brought up to be truthful, and truth has always mattered to me. The Church couldn't cope and so we parted company. It was a miserable experience.  He now describes himself as a candid friend of Christianity. 

I mention all this because MacCullogh’s most recent book is an amazing work about silence in the history of the Christian faith.[1]  He describes how, from the outset, the church has generally tended to be a noisy and busy thing, from the trumpets and panoply of Westminster Abbey to the yelling choirs of Fiji or the loud dogmatic preaching so much admired in numerous places.  Through it all however, down the years, has always been another stream.  For a myriad of reasons many people of faith have had to walk a more silent path.  MacCullogh calls them Nicodemists, after the man who came to Jesus by night.  I don’t have time to go into this in detail, but it is as well to be aware of a stream of faith which is more hidden and quieter, not always orthodox. 

Of course there may be those who live their faith in silence or invisibility because they have something to hide.  But here we are talking more of the many whose journey, whatever they may have wished, has distanced them from the church’s familiar sounds and sights, and activisms.  They express their faith inwardly – some might say, selfishly – and typically with more doubts and hesitations than would normally be considered decent. There is a mature faith which looks not so much for inspiration and encouragement, nor for constant reassurance, as for a subtle inner consent and a cordial but humble acceptance of mystery.  These are the silent people in the church, and on the outskirts of the church.  Some of them like me are at an advanced age and of a crotchety disposition. 

I think the real point here is that faith, however it is lived and expressed, needs by its nature to keep growing and developing.  It is necessary to set aside whatever stunts that growth.  St Paul wrote about this quite clearly.  The church is not always helpful.  Simone Weil feared the church as a social structure.  Actually the church can’t help much with the journey of contemplative life and prayer, and it’s hardly fair to expect that it should.  It is what Robert Frost called the road less traveled.  There is much silence along it, and perhaps much solitude.  And yet, it contains the wisdom the structural, institutional church will need from now on if it is to live and grow.

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[1] Diarmaid MacCullogh: Silence, A Christian History (Allen Lane, 2013).

 

Returning – 4 October 2013

The rhythm of the mantra, that is to say, the simple discipline of gently, interiorly, repeating the mantra – and then, finding that we have strayed from it, that we have got distracted -- and therefore gently and simply returning to it…  this is at the heart of Christian Meditation.  It is actually all we do.  To some this seems altogether too naïve to be true.  It’s not even meritorious.  There is no formula for success. Sometimes people think we ought to help things along by lighting candles, playing reverential music, reading some inspiring thoughts, to give the impression that we’ve done something. But like the treasure hidden in the field, this is the whole point of taking time in our busy and important lives to stop all that, to be still and silent.  We shut down our family lives, our business lives, our religious lives, and even our personal lives.  They will all be there when we’ve finished.  And in that silence, in which the only landmark is the mantra, returning to it is the point.  Someone complained to Fr Thomas Keating, My 30 minutes of meditation was useless.  I was distracted 10,000 times.  And he said, How wonderful.  You had 10,000 opportunities to come back.

Coming back means that we have reset our priorities for the moment.  All the important things, the things we have to control, the things we believe depend on us, the agenda of things to do today, we have chosen to set aside for the moment.  For now, we do not admit them to our presence where God is present.  That’s the easy part.  As we know, the minute we have made a start on that, choosing the mantra, the mind gets seriously anxious and fills up the space with memories and regrets, ancient and modern – and if all that fails, along come the thoughts (as Jesus said) about what we will eat and drink, and how we will be clothed.  Every time, returning is the thing that counts. 

It’s a very biblical concept.  The Hebrew word return is “shub” שוב, which connotes coming back to where we always belonged.  In quietness and trust will be your strength, writes Isaiah [30:15], in returning and rest will you be saved. The Greek word is “metanoia” μετανοια, and it means turning right around.  Jesus’s story of the prodigal son hinges on the fact that the young man decided, I will get up and go to my father… a picture movingly and forever depicted by Rembrandt in The Return of the Prodigal. 

Meditators and all contemplative people come to know a place which is almost impossible to talk about.  It is what would remain if everything else disappeared.  It is good because it doesn’t depend on us.  We glimpse what is meant by the narrow gate and the eye of the needle – we come back to this place repeatedly with empty hands but a full heart.  And it is the mantra that points the way.