“The day lies open before us”

“The day lies open before us.” Every day these words are spoken by thousands of clergy and lay people who say Morning Prayer throughout the world.

“The day lies open before us”

There is such a beautiful invitation in those words. It is like looking at a canvas just before you put on the first stroke of paint, or those moments at school when you were given a new exercise book and you opened it at the first page: how neatly you tried to write! It is like waking up and knowing it is the holidays and you don’t have an agenda you have to fulfil or being up early in the morning when even the birds have not woken. “The day lies open before us,” full of potential, full of promise, full of hope.

Yet, how often do we get to the end of the day, or even the middle of the day, and find ourselves feeling grey, exhausted and trapped. Then the lines that come to mind are more likely to be

“Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing boy” Wordsworth

Why is life like this? Why are the good intentions of the morning to be open to all that God wants to give us in our day, so quickly undermined by what that same day throws at us?

It is, of course, not what comes at us but how we respond to it that changes our perception of our day and there are all sorts of self-help books that are aimed at empowering us and giving us a sense of control over our lives, and some of them are useful. But where most of them fall down for me is that they leave God out of the picture altogether. They are quick fix techniques aimed at problem solving. They leave out the big questions that underlie so much of our dismay but are also there for our growth, healing and understanding if only we could see it.

The bible is very clear:

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

We need the God dimension to makes sense of ourselves and our world. Human wisdom is not enough. We will always have good days and bad days. Things will get on top of us; we will feel stressed, angry, overwhelmed and resentful at times; but as we come daily to the source of wisdom, God, insight will grow, we will become like deeply rooted trees, full of life and movement but not tossed about by every passing wind. And we will find there are more days than not that we feel hope and anticipation as we say, “The day lies open before us.”

Learning by heart

 

It was a beautiful autumnal morning as I walked across to chapel first thing.  A mist hung over the fields with a hazy sun shining through low on the horizon.  The apple trees stood in the orchard loaded with their fruit.  The wood pigeons cooed, some far away, some near, and after the extraordinarily busy day yesterday (the Launde Abbey “Fun Day”) when the world and his wife seemed to be visiting, the whole world seemed today to be wrapped in peace, softness and quietness.

 

As I walked the words of the first poem I ever had to learn in secondary school came into my head, John Keat’s, “To Autumn.”

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

 

And as I said the words over I was glad, as I always am to find in them a response to what I was seeing and feeling.  I thought of one or two other poems I had been made to learn at school or come to though my father (a great lover of poetry) and how through the years I had come appreciate the way that words, like music, come back to us and enrich us because we have learnt them “by heart.”

 

It is an interesting phrase, “learning by heart.”  We don’t, of course, really learn by heart.  We learn by rote, by repeating something over and over again until our memory stores it.  But in the process some words call out to us and delight us and become etched into our feelings.  The pulling of these words out of our store of memories at opportune moments enriches our experience and widens and deepens our hearts’ response.  We greet the words as old friends we have not seen for some time.

 

Faith is all about learning by heart.  What we first learn as story becomes carved into our very being – and if we do not learn “by heart” as well as “by head” ours will be an empty experience.  Faith, too, has words we learn by heart: words that bring strength and comfort to difficult times and express love and praise when our hearts are so full we want to sing out loud.  When I was fifteen and lost my mother I was greatly comforted by Christ’s promise in the last verse of Matthew’s gospel,

 

And remember I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

 

I would repeat it to myself often as I waited for sleep at night.

 

The special power of words engraved into the memory is that the heart and mind over time have time to ponder and meditate over them.  Particularly with words of scripture as the mind turns them over the heart leaps to understanding so that old, well known passages bring out of their store new, life-giving things.  Learnt by heart words long known continue to have power, not least to surprise us.

  Re-naming Sin

The word “sin” was a no-no with the last Confirmation group I led. Within the group were five people who had been brought up in Roman Catholics families, one of whom was from an Eastern European background and two from Irish. As soon as I used the word “sin” they almost visibly withdrew into a rather defensive and angry position. When I asked why the answer came that they had been loaded down with a sense of “sin” during their upbringing and if the Anglican Church was going to do the same, they wanted none of it. We had to find other ways of naming “sin.”

This week I talked to a woman, once a committed churchgoer, who had also rejected the Church because of its language about various things. Its emphasis on “sin” was one of them. Yet as she shared her vision about who God is in language she felt comfortable with, there was absolutely nothing that I couldn’t accept as orthodox Christian belief, but put in a rather refreshing way.

As I prepared to say the Confession in the Eucharist today, I thought of these people and all the ways I had “sinned” in my understanding of that word, this week. During this last week I have on occasions quite consciously turned away from God, been resistant to him, been half-hearted in what I have done on his behalf, fallen short (and sometimes more than short) in thought, word and deed in my dealings with other people. But I was rescued a long time ago from the heavy, heavy burden that so many people seem to carry because of this word “sin” and I think I was rescued because that word and lots of other theological words, were explained well to me along with the loving, forgiving nature of God. Sin was explained like this.

Imagine you have a bow and arrow and you are shooting at a target. You aim towards the bull’s eye, but if your aim is just an iota off by the time it reaches the target it will be way off the bull’s eye and might even miss the target altogether. This “missing the mark” is what sin is. Once I understood this I also comprehended how temptation to do something which is not in the end good for us, so often comes wrapped up in what seems acceptable. We can think we are travelling in the right direction but something pulls us off course.

The conversation with the lady this week reminded me that there are many serious seekers out there who are prevented from penetrating deeply into the gospel by religious language. It made clear to me yet again that I have to learn to listen much better to their language about God and their longing for him rather than insist on using my own. Perhaps we all need to realise that some of the religious language we habitually use doesn’t mean the same to others as to us. Some of it carries such loaded cultural history that it wounds people rather than rescues them and portrays an image of God that is not loving but condemning. No wonder they run a mile.

Trusting in a Promise

In the television programme, “The ‘A’ Team,” one of the characters, John “Hannibal” Smith had a catch-phrase, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Every now and then I have the same feeling when everything in a service comes together, or even a whole day.

We had such a day at Launde Abbey yesterday with two joyful celebrations. In the morning Eucharist we thanked God for the Golden Wedding anniversary of a couple who were staying with us. In the afternoon we baptised a baby. What kicked the whole day into gear for me were the Sunday readings which were about God’s promise to Abram (Abraham) and Abram’s response of faith and trust, which was then reflected upon by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. As I researched and reflected on the readings I realised how a promise changes the future.

When two people stand up in front of their family and friends and say “I will” in response to the invitation to love and cherish each other and to remain faithful to that vow or promise through thick and thin until death, they are changing the future not just by their intention for the future but by the very act in the present. All is changed by the love, hope and faithfulness that is expressed in that public declaration. Courage, confidence and freedom are the gifts that the union brings when a person is prepared to say to another, “Out of all the people in the world who I could chose to love and spend my life with, I chose you.” How impressive is that when you think about it!

A promise is not material. Just as Abram could not count the stars in the sky which God invited him to look at, promising him that his descendents would be more than them, so any promise or vow has elements of the unknown. I may promise to love you in sickness and in health, but how that love may be called forth, what we may have to face together, no one can say. The point is that the promise is something we lean into: something that we make work day by day because we have faith in the one who made the promise to us.

Baptism is similar. We make statements of intent rather than promises but underneath all that we do is our belief in the love of God for the unique individual who is being presented for baptism. If parents and Godparents can receive the promise God has made, to be with the child “until the end of time,” if they can lean into that promise of future care for the child, taking seriously their commitment to bring them up to know their loving Father, then the child in turn may have the opportunity to understand the commitment He has made to them. They will grow in confidence, courage and freedom because they know God loves them.

Promises change the future in a tangible way. They change not just the people who make them but the community in which those people live. Promises can, of course, be bad as well as good; they can lead to damaging, hurtful actions where the intention is corrupt. Promises can also, with the best of intentions, go wrong. But whatever mess we might make of our lives, God’s promise to love and care for us is unchangeable. He does not promise that we will never suffer but he promises he will be there in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty. If we live this promise into the future we find it is true.

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” For years I misunderstood these words. I thought they were there to comfort those of us who felt inadequate in our fumbling practice of prayer. I heard them as saying, “You can pray when you like, where you like, in any style you like, as long as it works for you.” And of course in one way this is exactly what these words mean. They are saying there is no one way of praying. Don’t let anyone be prescriptive and tell you the way you pray is wrong.

What I did not hear for years in this phrase was the words, “Pray as you can…” or rather I didn’t take them seriously. Then one day I read something and I realised I had been praying really naturally for years. It was just that it was so natural to who I am, so instinctive so to speak, that I hadn’t realised it. What was more was that I realised it was a recognisable school of prayer. I hadn’t made something up. I was praying as thousands of other people have prayed for centuries. I was praying even like people in the bible, but I hadn’t known it.

What we are comfortable with in prayer is closely akin to who we are; our personality types. Some people are naturally spontaneous in prayer; some people like to meditate deeply on scripture; some like a wordless, contemplative style of prayer and others strive to create a deep intimate relationship with God. It is great fun to experiment over the years with different styles of prayer and I believe a healthy diet in prayer includes more than one style because each school of prayer offers a different way of approaching God using different parts of who we are. So in one style of praying we can find ourselves using our imagination. In another we question the biblical text. In another we use our senses more (smell, touch, taste, feel, hearing) and in yet another do nothing (seemingly) but sit quietly and silently waiting on God. But if we come across a style of prayer and it doesn’t work for us we shouldn’t think there is something wrong with us or that we are doing it wrong. It just will never be our preferred way of praying.

But there is one valuable point that we should take on board, whatever our preferred method of prayer is, and that is that some of our less preferred ways of praying do us a great deal of good. “Pray as you can, not as you can’t,” is a great starting point but it doesn’t take on board that we have undeveloped sides of ourselves that have great potential. Stretching those undeveloped muscles by praying in a different way, can really help build up my spiritual life, make me more disciplined and spiritually mature and challenge me to think and act differently. Pray as you can, yes – but sometimes pray as you think you can’t and see what happens.

We erect barriers all the time in our lives. They are created because of a kind of shorthand of cultural and learnt expectation. But every now and then things happen to us, which take us out of our usual comfort zones and wake us up to our prejudices and limited thinking.

I spent a rather unusual day at the beginning of this week, being alongside my husband as he went in for day surgery. We were taken to a sideward of six beds. The noises from a couple of the other beds as my husband settled in were not comforting. Two gentlemen who had had the same operation he was about to have were vomiting violently. The curtains round the beds were closed and anxious relatives hovered outside them as nurses administered anti- vomiting injections and cleaned up, all with the greatest of kindness and efficiency, it must be said.

I left the hospital for an appointment as my husband was taken into surgery. I was due to meet with a man with Asperger’s syndrome to talk about various topics around the spiritual care of people with learning disabilities, their carers and others who come into contact with them, and the theology of disability. I do not know exactly what I expected to meet; probably someone with whom I might find it difficult to make emotional contact? What I discovered was a man with immensely compassionate eyes and expression, who listened carefully and thoughtfully to what I had to say and who explained his theological understanding of disability simply and directly. Here was a man who had found God in his disability and made a deep and profound study of the spiritual needs of those with learning disabilities over many years. What struck me was how his heart had travelled with his head to reach the point he was at. I was joyfully surprised at one of those unexpected real “meetings” of two persons that we are sometimes blessed with. This was one barrier down – a barrier that I realised I had erected not purposefully or meaning to be unkind, but just automatically in my ignorance and cultural prejudice.

I returned to the hospital where I waited for my husband to come back from surgery. One poor chap was still being sick behind his curtain. My husband returned, thank fully without a bad reaction to the general anaesthetic. Patients got better, curtains opened and I saw behind the two curtains a Muslim man and a Sikh man. My husband and the others chatted and there was quiet and gentle sympathy of one person with another. A shared condition, the experience of the same operation, had broken down any shyness or self-consciousness there might have been. Curtains closed had meant that all we could know of another was that this was a human being, male, having a bad time. Christian, Sikh, Muslim and for all I know Jew, Buddhist and atheist in the other beds, were simply people together, glad and grateful for the care they had been given.

Another barrier down. Too often, I know, I judge people by appearances. I see the turban before the person; the Muslim beard disguises the human being underneath and I stop at them. The real curtains in the hospital allowed me to see the curtains veiling my mind and heart; the eyes – mirrors of the soul – in my new friend with Asperger’s helped me see myself.

Beginners’ Mind
Both St Benedict and the Buddha spoke of something called, “Beginners’ Mind”. St Benedict in his “Rule” wrote that however long we have been people who pray, we must always come to prayer as if we know nothing. It is so easy to think that knowledge is wisdom, learnt techniques of prayer, prayer itself. But prayer is about coming as openly and honestly to God as we can, it is about learning to “be still and know that I am God.” It is about understanding our utter dependence on God, “Without me you can do nothing.”

However, that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Our minds are often distracted and anxious in prayer. The great Dutch theologian, Henri Nouwen, wrote of a simple way of praying that had helped him over the years. When faced with a problem which filled his mind and heart and for which he didn’t know the answer, he would say, “Lord, I don’t know what to do about this….and I don’t have to.” In that, “I don’t have to,” was the moment of letting go and of letting God, of opening himself up to God and returning to “Beginners’ Mind.”

But “Beginners’ Mind” is not just an attitude for times of prayer. It is an attitude that we are invited to develop for our lives in general. The ego is always vying for the upper hand. Pride is our constant uninvited and sly companion. As soon as we learn something new, become “wiser in our own eyes,” most of us are tempted to vaunt our newfound knowledge and wisdom. What happens when we do that is that we close ourselves down to everything else. We are no longer open to that deeper place of receiving; we cease to see, to listen and to be aware of the Spirit moving deep within us and of others and their needs. We cease to have “beginners mind.”

St Aquinaus saw what he described as “the clear light” at the end of his life and decided that all his writings were as “chaff.” He became silent and never wrote again. Perhaps all his knowledge and wisdom in the end led him back to “Beginners Mind.”

Listen

Like many people I wake in the morning with a “to do” list in my head. Before I am even aware of where I am my mind is going through all that has to be done with quite a lot of emotions tagged on to how I feel about what is before me. Listening to the “Today” programme and going through the motions of getting up and getting out crowd my head with more stuff, so that although I have one of the shortest and most attractive journeys to work you can imagine, I can be oblivious to all of it, aware only of what is in my head.

But some days something happens and everything is changed. I listen.

I am deeply privileged in as much as I start my working day in a chapel, usually with time set aside before the first service of the day begins. Sitting on a chair in the chapel it is perfectly possible to continue the running commentary that began almost before I was fully awake. Minutes can pass without any awareness at all of my surroundings or myself, completely cut off in the world inside my head.

But sometimes the song of a bird or the tap of a branch on the window breaks through and suddenly, in a moment, all is changed. Hearing the bird and becoming aware of hearing the bird brings you suddenly into the present moment. Listening for the next call makes you acutely aware of the silence between as well as the call of the bird. And all this somehow makes you aware of yourself in the place in which you are. It is a kind of bird “watching” with the ears and it makes sacred the present moment.

Reading this you would be forgiven for thinking, “Well, it is all very well for you with your quietness broken only by birdsong, but I live on a main road in a town!” I was first taught to listen to the noises outside as a way of quietening myself and bringing myself into the present moment, when I lived in a town. Listening to specific traffic noises can wake you up to the present moment just as well. And even on a main road there are moments of surprising silence in which you wait, aware and listening acutely for the next sound.

St Benedict famously began his “Rule,” with the words, “Listen, my son.” He meant listen acutely as if you were a doctor listening to someone’s heart through a stethoscope. If we really want to listen we have to concentrate on something other than what is in our heads. We have to be still, to concentrate, to forget ourselves and to allow the other, whatever or whoever it is, in. In doing this, strangely, we find ourselves, our true and whole selves. Listening anchors us in the now.

The Eye of the Needle

Jesus said, “It is easier to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” As a younger person I understood that saying literally and superficially. We should not have more than enough money when other people were poor, we should be generous, and having too much money somehow got in the way of our relationship with God. Simple solution: don’t seek wealth but be satisfied with enough.

Lately, I have begun to understand things differently. Somehow wealth and impoverishment go together and a person who is poor is not necessarily impoverished.

We live in the richest third of the world peoples and yet many observers would say that we suffer lives of great impoverishment. The reason for this is our very wealth can create a life style which is deeply unsatisfying. We are spiritually and emotionally malnourished; and, worst of all, our impoverishment is largely self-chosen.

Some wealthy people chose to live in gated communities. By cutting themselves off in this way they feel safe and they can avoid people who are not like them: they can avoid pain. Behind this life style choice is the desire not to see, to nullify and not to be confronted with those things that make them uncomfortable. The result is that, of course, they cut themselves off from life itself and choose instead to exist in a cotton wool ghetto. Their lives, whether they know it or not, are impoverished.

But with the life choices we are able to make many of us do something very similar. We too, want to avoid the discomfort and pain which is part of what life is about and is for our growth and our healing, if only we recognise it. The life style walls we build are just as much about avoidance. Our walls are called “distraction.”

Distraction could be considered a commodity. In the First World we buy distraction in and fill our lives with it. And we are buying more and more. Distraction is the quick fix solution which momentarily fills the void but gives no lasting satisfaction. It masks the pain but does not deal with it. It is the fast food meal that does not nourish the real hunger. From morning until night we chose distraction because we cannot bear the pain of our own emptiness, lack of satisfaction and longing. So we fill our lives with escapism: computers, iPhones, noise, popular entertainment, fantasy holidays, magazines, puzzle books. In our touch screen world everything is on hand all the time to help us to avoid ourselves, our loneliness and our hunger for meaning. Those who live in the Second and Third Worlds do not have such choices. They are poor but they often have stronger communities and oddly more satisfaction in life than we have.

It is hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven not because God prevents it happening but because we do so. Wealth has always allowed people to buy into distraction and out of reality. But it is only in daring to become real that true satisfaction can be found.

Giving abundantly from our poverty

In the story of the Widow’s Mite (Mark 12: 41 – 44), Jesus is sitting outside the temple with his disciples watching the people put their offering of money into the treasury. The rich give abundantly. Then a widow comes along who puts in two small coins, “all that she has to live on,” and Jesus, observing her, points out to his disciples that this woman has given more than anyone else because the rich who gave abundantly still have an abundance of money. It hasn’t really cost them anything to give, whereas this woman now has nothing to live on.

The poor widow is, however, rich in her attitude to God. In the giving away of her small coins which are, paradoxically, her greatest material wealth, she honours God by putting him first, by putting service to him above her own needs. She expresses a powerful faith: one that demonstrates itself in actions. She acts with great trust as she chooses to live for God in the moment.

And, of course, this anonymous woman has given us great riches from her poverty. When she put in her little coins she had no idea she was being observed, no idea that her story would be told over and over again; that she would challenge those of us who know we give only out of abundance, who know we don’t put God first, who recognise how partial our love of God is when measured against hers. This anonymous woman has challenged us and our attachment to material wealth for centuries.

The irony is that her very gift to us comes from her poverty. She never knew that her small act of the moment would change the world, challenge wealthy and powerful people hundreds of years later. But perhaps she knew that though she was poor, she was not impoverished: that her action expressed a greater freedom in its letting go and trusting God, than most of us will ever know.

She taught us another thing, too: something the saints have proclaimed down the ages. If we live in God, when we are weak, we are strong and when we are poor, we are rich and it is in recognising our poverty that we have most to give.