28 September 2018

Because the bell rings – 28 September 2018


One of the best-known quotes from the Benedictine writer Sister Joan Chittister originated when she was addressing her fellow nuns in a seminar, and she asked them, “Why do we pray?”  They supplied all sorts of worthy and lofty answers.  But Sr Joan said, “No – we pray because the bell rings.”   And indeed the Rule of St Benedict provides[1]: On hearing the signal… monastics will immediately set aside what they have in hand and go with utmost speed, yet with gravity…  But then comes a typical Benedictine touch – the first Psalm, Benedict orders, is to be said quite deliberately and slowly, to give time for latecomers.

Now what is the point here?  Sr Joan provides it, in a way, in one sentence:  Prayer is not just one more thing in the day….  She adds: We are meant to go to it consciously, seriously, with concentration, so that every day we may become more and more immersed in the presence of God.  Well, to modern devotees of the secular culture, this sounds simply incomprehensible...  more and more immersed in the presence of God.  It is what they always feared about religion and religious people, that you retreat into some dreamland based on hopes and myths, and lose your grip on truth and reality.  But also, to many sincere church-going people, it sounds over the top.  Prayer, they would say, is a Good Thing, no doubt, in its place… and so on.  It suits some church folk very well (not all of course) to have their prayer said for them in an orderly and objective manner, by priest or vicar or pastor, in familiar language, at set times.

A contemplative person is one who, we might say, after weeks or months of perhaps shaky attention to a discipline of silence and stillness, woke up one morning and realised that familiar attitudes and actions were shifting, altering.  Making a space in which we are simply present, having a mantra as something to return to repeatedly from the drip-feed of distractions and preoccupations… all of this is effecting change.  The changes are subtle, but at times unmistakable.  There are various ways in which prayer-silence, attention, insight, we might say, are now quietly and gently spilling over into all of life.  The heart and the mind inwardly know… oddly enough, often enough, by unknowing.  We may be aware of a new steadiness.  Fears, anxieties, seem no longer to loom the same ways.  We are disinclined to talk about it much – or at any rate, if we do, we might later wish we hadn’t. 

It is what the 17th century French Carmelite monk, Brother Lawrence, called The Practice of the Presence of God.[2]  It is absolutely not that we have become starry-eyed and always on the edge of some rapture... “heavenly-minded but no earthly use”, as some have put it.  Just the opposite – we are now freer than we were to attend to truth and to reality, and to bear pain. 

In the monastery the bell rings at set times.  In lay contemplative life it rings frequently, usually faintly in the background, as a reminder and a call.  We are those for whom the bell tolls… we hear, and we respond with love.



[1] Rule of St Benedict, ch 43
[2] My copy is a translation by New Zealander, E M Blaiklock (Hodder & Stoughton 1981.  Published also by Thomas Nelson, 1982). 

21 September 2018

The Parable of the Child – 21 September 2018


Then he took a little child and put (the child) among them; and taking (the child) in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:36-37)

There are levels of meaning here.  The disciples had been having a private chat about precedence… who is great in the coming kingdom, and who will be not so great.  Jesus inconveniently intervenes… what were they arguing about?  He reminds them, whoever wants to be first must be servant of all… which sits uneasily with our culture of being a winner, getting ahead…

I think however it is what we might call the “Parable of the Child” that brings this event to life.  All three gospel writers report, a little child,[1] a toddler, an infant.  The point of the diminutive noun is that this child is helpless without us, is entirely dependent on adult care for growth and health, maybe even for survival.   Jesus took the child in his arms, it says.  It is the child who is first, has precedence, in Jesus’s kingdom.  There it is for all to see.  There is no higher priority in the kingdom.  Jesus could scarcely say it more clearly – but he nails it with his words: Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.  God is watching that child, and what we do… or neglect.  On one level it is about our duty of care for our children, of course – but it is also about what matters most in Jesus’s kingdom, which is decidedly not power, wealth or achievement. 

Al Jazeera ran a reportage on what is in fact happening to children, at present, in various places as a result of war, violence, ignorance and neglect.  We saw children in their thousands, many of them skeletal, already too ill to respond to medical help and recover – in Yemen, in Syria, in the Congo, in South Sudan…  I think there is a special place in hell for people who make war on children.   

Then there is the searing truth of generations of gross abuse of children within the church and elsewhere.  And after we have expended a million words on cause and blame and retribution, the fact is, the only satisfactory response is for the violence and the abuse to utterly cease, and for children to be cared for as our first duty, as Jesus clearly taught.

…then, in my anger, perhaps providentially, Fr Laurence Freeman intervened in a general post.  He reminded us: The contemplative response to violence should affirm the goodness and potential of humanity.  Further along he wrote: Meditation doesn’t solve problems. It transforms how we see and approach them – including the most ancient and intractable problem of humanity, the inhumanity of violence.  We are to do what we can, of course, which is to renounce violence, so far as it lies with us, at any rate absolutely against children – and again absolutely, as we can, teach and initiate and practise love and recognition of children, and care, shelter, food and education, security, hope and faith, for the children we know.  If we neglect that, I suspect, any of our other achievements might strike the heavenly courts as unimpressive.



[1] Greek paidion, παιδιον, diminutive of pais, παις, a child.

14 September 2018

Response – 14 September 2018


…on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”  He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:27-29)

On the way… is a popular motif in the gospels.  They typically talked as they walked, on the road.  It’s a picture to trigger our imaginations – they learned as they went along, as we do, day by day, if learning and growing are what we want.  Not everyone welcomes learning new things or changing.  If what we hope for is things to stay the same, with certainty, safety and security, then learning and growing are scarcely going to happen.  But in Jesus’s company, evidently, the changing scenery facilitated developing hearts and minds. 

He asked them first, what are people saying about me… who do they say I am?  The answers show how we feel better if we can categorise, simply pin a label, good or bad, on someone[1] – that way, we have pigeon-holed things in an orderly manner, we know what we think, and best of all, we may have established that we are not threatened, life can continue…  So, reply the disciples, some say you are John the Baptist back to life again, some say Elijah, others say some other of the prophets.   It is a warning about labelling Jesus – if I want to know who Jesus is, really, it’s pretty pointless to ask around, conduct a poll, do a street survey, even around the church. 

So Jesus asks: But youwho do you say I am?  Peter knows the answer.  You are the Christ, ὁ Χριστος, the Anointed One – Messiah, in Hebrew.  It is a catechism answer, and the implication is that, since it is the “right” answer, it is the answer for everyone.  In some Christian circles defining Jesus correctly (or Mary, or the Trinity…) is used as a test of orthodoxy… as every parish minister discovers before long. 

But Jesus asks a crucial question.  Who do you say I am…?  It is an invitation to discover, in our own personal experience, over the years and through the mysteries and setbacks and sadnesses, as well as the triumphs of life, who he is.  What matters is not the catechism answer, but my answer.  Moreover, my answer today might differ significantly from my answer 30 years ago, or even last year – because I am further along the road, learning as I go.  The issue is not whether I am “correct” in my answer, but whether my answer is what I am living by, enlightened by, whether my answer is coming from doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly.  What matters is not the labels I put on Jesus, even labels prescribed by church or bible, although they may be helpful… so much as what he is making of me as I take step after step, as I remember the great gospel themes and teachings, as I review what has happened in my life and among the people I know and love, and as I value the times I am able to spend in silence and stillness, simply present to God as God in Christ is, and always was, present to me.

(In our group's discussion later, one member said Jesus might have been clearer if he had asked, "But who am I to you...?"  I agree.)



[1] Eg. I was labelled, on Facebook this week, “a racist low-life”.  The person feels better now, having categorised me.

07 September 2018

Joy without a cause – 7 September 2018


"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"

It’s G K Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse, written over 100 years ago, 1911, as he watched events building up to the First World War catastrophe – and, as a convinced practising believing Christian, he watched the posturings of a compromised church blessing battleships.  Then it was for him, as it is now for many of us, increasingly and urgently a matter of how to express the way of Christ in a world rife with menace and mendacity – the sky grows darker yet, the sea rises higher -- when the church too seems to have lost its way… but to remember also the joy that remains at the heart of it all, in Christ – joy without a cause, faith without a hope, writes Chesterton  It is reminiscent of another of Britain’s 20th century poets, T S Eliot:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.[1]

It is the poets who come to our help, the psalmists, the Hebrew verse we usually ignore in the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, not afraid of mystery and unanswered questions, speaking to our hearts, often in imponderables, paradoxes, expressing our conflicts.  Did you notice in Eliot…waiting without words… the faith the hope and the love are all in the waiting, he says… wait without thought… the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.  He describes exactly what we do in Christian Meditation.

I profoundly believe, our basic duties in discipleship -- doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly -- will need to be sustained in the church and the world of the days ahead by simple disciplines of silence, stillness and consent to God.  It is what the poets call waiting.  Down that road lies what St Paul named joy, the fruit of the Spirit that comes next after love.[2]



[1] T S Eliot: East Coker, in Four Quartets.
[2] Galatians 5:22