“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein

My son gave me the autobiography of the actor, writer and film director Alan Alda, for Christmas. If you are old enough you will remember Alan Alda as the central character, Hawkeye, in the long-running television serial, “M.A.S.H.” He is a very able actor and his autobiography is honest, funny and rather unusual as such things go.

Alda describes how, over time, he learnt to be an actor and how he learnt the difference between acting and performing. There was a moment when he named for himself what was necessary to bring a scene to life. The word he used was ‘compassion.’

Alda realised that in a scene he had to be aware, all in the same moment, of himself in character and his feelings and of the other actor / actors and their feelings. He had to be aware of their reality as well as his own. Up to this point he had only been trying to get right his character in the scene.

Compassion comes from the Latin. ‘Com’ means ‘with’ and the nearest meaning of ‘passion’ in this case is ‘patient.’ Thus compassion strictly interpreted means being alongside someone in their suffering. This is exactly what compassion is when practiced in everyday life. It is recognising that the other has a real and actual life, even if I know little about it. And that in this life they experience similarly the fragility, vulnerability, joy, delight, desire and woundedness that I experience. We need to treat each other with care. We are susceptible to pain and hurt.

We experience ourselves as separate creatures, as Einstein states in the quotation at the top of this blog, but this is a delusion – and it makes us prisoners walled in by a one-dimensional life made up of our own limited experience and emotions. In order to break out of this prison we have to get enough distance from our own emotions (practice what is called ‘dispassion’) to be able to see the other person. Then, with imagination and a heart that longs to reach out to the other, we consciously try to see them in their own reality.

“Jesus, Thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love Thou art.” Thus go the words from the much loved hymn. Truly, this is the Jesus we meet in the gospels. Jesus sees people, always has time for people. You never get the feeling that he discounts anyone: doesn’t acknowledge them. Yes, he gets impatient on a few occasions, usually with his disciples because they are so slow in understanding. But having expressed his frustration he goes on working with them, bearing with them, teaching them and loving them to the end.

“God became man, so that man might become God.” (Athanasius) This is real compassion – getting into our humanity utterly and seeing life from our point of view.

We want to create a context of dignity for suffering people. To do so, it is essential to put our fingers on the pulse of our own hearts and make sure our own context of dignity is intact.

Roshi Joan Halifax

We are very mixed up kids.  So much in the news points to how mixed up we are.  The other day a photograph was put out on a television programme of an American teenage girl aged about 16 or 17, posing with a rifle in one hand and a bible in the other.  After we had had a moment to take that in another picture was placed beside the first one, of a young Jihadist girl in exactly the same pose as the American girl held and of about the same age, holding a rifle in one hand and a copy of the Koran in the other.  There didn’t need to be any commentary.  The pictures were better than a thousand words.

I lived in the USA for a year from 1966 to 1967 and loved it although in some ways it was a fearsome time.  My father was teaching at an American college.  Although it was in the east, in Pennsylvania, tensions between some of the black and white students were so heightened that there was a curfew in the town every night from 11pm onwards.  It was the middle of the Vietnam War.  I met a student who went off to the war and came back in a wheelchair.  Both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated in those twelve months.  And, as usual, the reaction to the shootings was that something needed to be done about the ease with which people could buy a gun in the US, whilst those against gun control shouted as loudly from the opposite corner.  There was a bumper sticker that was very popular on cars at this time.  It said,

God and guns made this country great.  Let’s keep it that way.

Here’s another bit of news that shows how mixed up we are.  Today we heard from an Oxfam report that the richest one percent of all the people in the world will soon own as much as the other ninety-nine percent and that eighty-five people in this world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world.  This seems absolutely outrageous and almost unbelievable.  But Oxfam tells us it is the case, and of course, along with money goes power.

What would Jesus say?

We in the west and we who are so well heeled are so good at taking the moral high ground, but, as the quotation by Roshi Joan Halifax at the top of this blog says if we (really) want to create a context of dignity for suffering people, we have to look at ourselves first.  It is no use our pointing to the speck of dust in someone else’s eye when we have a log in our own.  It is no use bemoaning the injustice in the world when we are part of that injustice and do not see it and then having seen it, do not speak out against it.  One of the greatest indignities we place on suffering people is to see them as charitable cases rather than human beings who have a right to live decent lives.  We need to look at ourselves and see how in need we are of charity.  Someone needs to help us to face ourselves and learn that we have a lot to learn about being really human, human beings.  Thanks be to God, for Jesus Christ!

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Marcus Aurelius  

This year, Advent 2014 to Christ the King 2015, is the year when we study Mark’s gospel. It is strange to go through Advent in the year of Mark because he has, of course, no birth stories: no Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem, no shepherds “abiding in the field.” Indeed, we only read Mark on the first two Sundays in the season, last week and this. Next week we go on to John the Evangelist’s picture of John the Baptist and the week after we are with Luke.

But Mark is not diminished because of his lack of birth stories. His adult Jesus bursts onto the stage shortly after we are introduced to John the Baptist, whom Mark very much sees as an Elijah figure. From the very first verse Mark tells us exactly what his story is about:

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1)

The subject is Jesus Christ who is the Son of God and this is good news. You can’t put it more bluntly or straightforwardly than that!

What I didn’t realise until a week ago is that this seemingly straightforward introductory verse, is really very subversive – or it was when it was written (and perhaps if we really took on board what it says, it would be just as subversive now.)

Augustus Caesar was Roman Emperor from 27BC to 14AD. He had himself made a god and on the Prine monument (so called because it was discovered in Prine, Turkey) the following inscription was found in Greek.

Caesar, [when he was manifest], transcended the expectations of [all who had anticipated the good news], not only by surpassing the benefits conferred by his predecessors but by leaving no expectation of surpassing him to those who would come after him, with the result that the birthday of our God signalled the beginning of Good News for the world because of him

Now the word “evangelion”, Good News or gospel or good tidings in Greek, was rarely used in pre-Christian times and when it was, it was it was employed in the sacred language use in the Imperial Cult. So when Mark choses to open his gospel as he does, using the words “Good News” alongside “Son of God”, he is really throwing down the gauntlet to Roman power, culture and beliefs. He is taking Roman language and making it speak of Christ instead. It is not Augustus Caesar who brings Good News for the world, it is a Jewish preacher and prophet from Nazareth whom the Romans have executed.

Mark probably wrote his gospel after the terrible time for Christians of Emperor Nero’s persecutions but before the fall of Jerusalem in AD70. He probably wrote for a beleaguered community who perhaps foresaw that the writing was on the wall for the destruction of their beloved city and temple. Despite this, Mark is not afraid. In the tradition of the prophets before him, he gives his one verse of introduction and then points to John the Baptist who himself points to Jesus. If you want to know what God looks like, says Mark, read what follows and prepare.

You keep us waiting. You, the God of all time, want us to wait, for the right time in which to discover who we are, where we are to go, who will be with us, and what we must do.  So thank you … for the waiting time.

John Bell, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers, compiled by Dorothy M. Stewart

 

Advent: the time of waiting.  Most of us are not very good at waiting, and I speak as one who is not.  I am a horrible passenger in a motorway traffic jam – you ask my husband.  I am  forever saying that we are in the wrong lane and if only we move into that  lane we will go faster – then we do – and you know what happens: the lane we have been in begins to move and the one we have moved to gets stuck.  I used to get irritable in supermarkets for the same reason.  The queue I was in always seemed to be the slow one.  The more I let my mind dwell on it the more annoying it seemed; it was unjust!  Sometimes, of course, waiting is difficult because we are very busy.  Time is short and will actually run out on us before we have finished doing what we had planned to do if the person in front doesn’t hurry up.

There is, of course, another kind of waiting which tastes different.  This is the waiting for the good thing that you know will inevitably come but not yet.  This is the waiting that goes alongside longing and expectancy.  This is the delicious waiting that children (and grown up children) feel when looking forward to Christmas, or a lover feels in anticipation of seeing the beloved.  And then there is the harrowing or painful waiting that we live in when knowing that a loved one is dying or we are waiting for potentially disturbing news or looking forward to something difficult.  Finally there is the waiting of not knowing.  Is he alive or dead?  Will she ring me or ignore me?

Waiting as described above seems to be an “in between time” between the real parts of our lives – something we want to get through (or sometimes not) to reach reality.  But that is not how John Bell sees it as quoted above.  Nor is it as R S Thomas saw it in his poem, Kneeling.  There he tells us, “the meaning is in the waiting.”

We all have to learn to wait but waiting time is still time which we can “waste” or “kill”, or “make” or “fill.”  If we learn to see life as a gift, even the hard bits; if we learn to see time as sacred and give our attention to living not restlessly waiting for what is to come but attuned to what is now, we begin to be able to receive the gift of waiting.  One of the most precious ways of praying, contemplative prayer, is all about waiting on God without knowing most of the time if there is any response from the God we seek, but just waiting, patiently, longingly.

Waiting is something we have to learn how to do.  The mother waits for the baby inside her to grow, at first not even conscious that it is there.  Waiting time which is consciously given to God either in set aside times of prayer or in attentiveness to his presence and the gift of life of each moment, also bears fruit.  It teaches us gratitude, rather than frustration.  It teaches us to listen, to observe, to perceive what is really happening inside and out.  Over time it teaches wisdom.

So may I invite you not to use the time of Advent, simply as a period to be got through so that we can get to Christmas, but as the season it is – the waiting time, longing time, time of expectancy, God’s time, in which he will teach us that the meaning is to be found, actually, in the waiting.

With all the commemorations at this time of year: everything from the celebration of the century since the birth of Dylan Thomas to All Souls and Remembrance Sunday, one is reminded that “time passes.” What, however, really makes me feel that time passes; indeed that time is running out, is when I hear of some future project being discussed in government and realising that I will be dead before it ever comes to fruition.

There is a tipping point in every human life when we realise that our time of greater energy and creativity is behind us, Not that we don’t have energy, creativity and, it is hoped, the wisdom that comes with the passing of the years, but that we just don’t have time; time to see the outcome of a favoured project. What do we do then? Do we simply not bother because “I won’t be around to see it.” No, indeed! This is the moment to realise in depth, if we have never realised it before, that we do not live for ourselves but for every other. We do not create for our time alone but for the future.

I came across a marvellous saying the other day. It was a slogan from the 2008 US presidential election. It said:

“Rosa sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Obama could be elected.”

Rosa was Rosa Parks, the black woman who in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat in the coloureds’ section of the bus to a white woman when told to do so by the bus driver, and was arrested. Her act of defiance led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott which fuelled the civil rights movement in America, raising its profile and allowing Martin Luther King to make progress. What Martin Luther King did led eventually to the election of the first coloured president of the United States, President Obama. But Rosa did not act on her own. She was the local secretary to the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, a civil rights movement that was formed in 1909! It took 99 years of civil disobedience by many people to come to that place where America could vote for a coloured president.

Earlier this year a dear friend died whom I didn’t meet until after his retirement. What he didn’t know anymore than any of us know was how long he would live – it turned out to be a over thirty years. During that time he gave his energy and commitment to many things: the ordination of women to the priesthood, the Jubilee Debt Campaign, and Africa, which he loved deeply, having worked there for many years. He was thoroughly committed to justice issues. His pre-retirement life was full of incident but for me, who only knew him after his retirement, he seemed to live a lifetime when he stopped working!

Yes, time passes for us as individual souls; but for each one of us who recognises that we are so much more than a particular and exclusive self, growing older gives us the opportunity to let die selfish ambition and to nurture a love for others and for their well being which gives us a part in what is to come. What we do, the choices we make, continue to matter. We continue to make the future.

O that today you would listen to his voice! (Psalm 95: 7b)

For some people dark mornings in winter are very difficult, especially for those who go to work in the dark, then work underground or in windowless spaces, and come out at the end of the day into darkness. For a little while I worked amongst such people and I know how hard the winter months were to them.

I am blessed in that, living at Launde, I am made aware of the gifts and delights of each season in my short walk from home to work, and I love walking to work in the dark, hearing the call of the first birds, the rustle of wind in the trees, the sense sometimes of dampness in the air, and all around the quiet that comes from a world still at rest.

But I am even more blessed on a Sunday.

Each Sunday at 7.45am, before the Eucharist at 8am, we go through a little ritual called the Blessing of the Water and the Renewal of Baptism Vows. The chapel is in darkness at this time of year and the preparation becomes part of the worship. The water from the bowl in the font is carried out of the back door of the chapel, the one that gives on to the little burial site, and poured onto the land (never down the drain: this water has been blessed). The bowl is filled with fresh tap water and placed in the font and the Pascal Candle, which stands by the font is lit. This is the only light in the chapel apart from the one on the stairs. The one candle lit, we then sit and wait in the darkness that wraps us around like a warm blanket, until it is time for the Blessing of the Water and the Renewal of Baptism Vows. Sometimes, depending on the time of year, grey light may begin to steal in through the windows as the dawn comes but in the depths of winter we remain in darkness.

When it is time we gather around the font. We hear the words of the blessing of the water.

God our Father, your gift of water brings light and freshness to the earth. It washes away sins and brings eternal life. Bless and hallow this water. Renew the living spring of your life within us….

We are reminded of God the Creator, of the extraordinary gift of life and that water is a prerequisite to life and a sustainer of it. We may remember those who do not have enough water. As we are reminded of Christ’s resurrection and renew our baptism vows, we stand again at the beginning of our Christian journey and hear again the call to a holy life. The short service over (no more than five minutes) we light the candles underneath the icons and on the altar from the Pascal candle – just as we do at dawn on Easter Day, and then sit again in the candlelit chapel until it is time for the Eucharist to begin.

I had never come across this little service until I came to Launde Abbey but I am so glad to have discovered it. Every Sunday, for a Christian, is supposed to be a celebration of the resurrection of our Lord and the Eucharist gathers up the story of Christ’s life, passion and resurrection. But each Sunday is also the first day of the week, a moment when we go back to the beginning, so to speak. The world is made fresh and we start again – and where do we start? With a reminder that out of darkness God brought light at the beginning of time; that water brings life and freshness to the earth; that at the darkest hour the Light of the World broke forth from the tomb of death and that, in baptism we received his Light to guide us, his Spirit to encourage us and our call to follow him, however dark it might sometimes be.

^8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
^9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9New International Version (NIV)

I have just had perhaps the most satisfying time spiritually since I came to Launde. I have just accompanied a pilgrim on some of the Exercises of St Ignatius. I say ‘some’ because we are not doing the Exercises in the way they are usually done, in a Thirty Day silent retreat, but in three lots of ten days over a three year period. We just completed what is called the “First Week,” and it was a stunning experience.

St Ignatius really developed what we call spiritual direction but I have also heard him described as the first psychologist. He had amazing insight into the movements that go on inside people emotionally and spiritually: movements towards what is for our good and healing and movements which are self-destructive; movements outwards towards God and others or away from God, inward, self-obsessed, negative and isolating in character. St Ignatius also refined ways of praying that had been around for some time; a few going right back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4^th century. These include the slow reading of scripture, stopping and waiting every time a word or phrase wake an affective response, to allow the word or phrase more deeply into one’s heart (Lectio Divina); the imaginative reading of scripture in which the reader is invited to enter into a story from the bible as if he or she were actually present; and, finally, the Examen of Consciousness – a time at the end of each day when the one who prays pauses to consider what has gone on inside himself during that day. Where did he feel most alive or most dull? Where did she feel most aware of God or another human being or the natural world? Where did she turn away? All of these exercises have the power to bring scripture to life, give a vivid, lived experience of God and convert the heart in a way which is deep and permanent.

During the Ignatian Exercises, the participant is guided step by step, day by day through Jesus’ life and their own life, reflecting deeply on both as they ponder all that God has given to them. It takes courage and commitment, as you would expect. But the journey for both pilgrim and guide is usually one of entry into the love of God that is beyond and above all human understanding and yet as close as breathing.

Launde Abbey will be doing the Second ‘Week’ of the Ignatian Exercises in November 2015, but we will also be offering six places on the First Week. Details are in the 2015 Programme on the website. You are very welcome to apply

One of the things that most of us have to do is a budget, be it a weekly working out of household costs or at work. As a parish priest I had to learn how to work within a budget for the church. Fortunately, we were blessed with a good treasurer and a church warden who was also an accountant, so I could for the most part, let them do most of the number crunching. But there was always that dark evening in November when we had to sit down and face the hard choices: to keep within our predicted income we had to make cuts. What was going to go? These decisions were hard because they were so often about ethical choices or about mission or about something for which we really had a passion. But it made me think. If it was hard for us in our little parish church how tough must it be for all those who in these financially demanding times are having to make cuts in public spending?

How do we make hard decisions? It has been pointed out to me recently that in most church business meetings we start with a five minute prayer and finish with something like the Grace. In between we do not refer anything to God at all, except perhaps in passing. We do not say, “Hey, let’s stop and pray about this.” Yet Christ’s instruction is to “Pray at all times and never lose heart” (Luke 18:1).” In a way, this is how the monastic idea of “praying the hours”, the periods of the day, came in. This is why religions like Judaism and Islam make such a point of stopping throughout the day to pray – much more so than Christianity. But this is really the saying of prayers (plural), different from prayer (singular). The one tends to be collective and verbal, the other tends to be private and silent. We need both. But when Jesus told us to “Pray at all times,” I think he was asking us to shoot all our activities through with the latter, prayer; to stop when we got stuck and turn to him.

During our budget meeting for Launde we got stuck. I joined the meeting late on in the day to find out where we had got to. Those who had been working at it all day were exhausted and deflated. So we decided to stop and just be silent for five minutes. Those who wanted to were invited to pray quietly and if you didn’t want to, you could just sit and be still. I must admit, the cynical side of me didn’t believe it would make much difference, but the other side was saying, “Give God a chance to talk to you about this.” In the event, one completely new and very viable idea was brought to the table and two others gained real clarity and confirmation in that five minutes of silent turning to God.

This is the second time in six months that I have seen this invitation to pray work. Both were in church business meetings when things were either stuck or threatened to unravel. So perhaps it is time to take Jesus’ instruction seriously, not only in our everyday private life (pray as you make the shopping list, pray as you shop, pray on the train to work or in the car, pray for people at the school gates or on the phone etc) but much more so in our church business meetings. Should not every decision we make on behalf of the kingdom of God be checked out with God? And in these times of money shortages and anxiety in the Church about money and falling congregation, should we not especially remember the second half of Christ’s instructions and be comforted by it, “Pray at all times and never lose heart.”

“I love it when a plan comes together,” said John ‘Hannibal’ Smith, a character in the television series from the 1980s called the ‘A’ Team.  I get the same sense of frisson when a whole series of small incidents seem to coincide, as if someone somewhere is trying to get a point across.

There was just such an occasion a couple of days ago when I was staying with some friends.  First, I watched a television programme about Stonehenge.  Then I was given a cup of tea in a mug with a picture of Stonehenge on it; and finally I opened the book I was reading at the fifth chapter to find that the whole of the first two paragraphs referred to Stonehenge.  But the sense of excitement came not from Stonehenge in the end but from what the writer of my book suggested it illustrated: the “temp” part of the word “contemplation.”  This was new to me and thrilling, so I am passing it on.

The word “temp” comes from the same root as “notch”; notch as in a mark made in a stick or on a stone to denote a measurement.  So you might measure the length of something by marking a notch on your piece of wood and then another mark to denote the end of what you are marking.  Thus, “temp” is a measure of something as in temperament (the measurement of somebody’s emotional or psychological state), tempo (the measure of musical beat), temporary ( denoting a short or impermanent time) or temporal (meaning a state of chronological time or something worldly or earthly.)  There are plenty more words with “temp” in them to illustrate the meaning.

But however the word might be used today, originally it was not an earthbound word but a measurement for the heavens, the place where people looked for answers.  The augurs in ancient Rome would gaze at the stars to see if the deities favoured or disapproved of actions proposed by the city.  This was what Stonehenge was supposed in part to do.  It was, amongst other things, a giant time piece which denoted the summer and winter equinoxes and the full moons.  Whoever used it was doing so in order to study the stars and to listen to the gods.  But over time the place below from which the heavens were studied became a sacred space and took on the name of “temp, as well.”  From this we get the Latin word “templum.”  This was not a building but a sacred space and, eventually, this became temple, the place or building in which the higher things, the things of God, are studied and worshipped; where, earthbound as we are, we can measure the heavens.

Contemplation is therefore that state in which we deliberately place ourselves in a position to measure, spend time with, reflect on that which is ‘higher.’  “Con” means “with” so we are putting ourselves with the reflecting or meditating time.  It is a purposeful act but it is also a natural one.  It is an action that has been innate in human beings from the beginning.

We still gaze up at the stars and it is right that we do so because they are wonderful and they give us a sense of proportion.  We no longer worship the stars, however.  Nor do we believe anymore that we have to worship in the temple of Jerusalem for our faith to be genuine.  The “temple” became for Christians, the person of Jesus Christ.  It is when we gaze on him, when we spend time with him, that our eyes, hearts, minds and spirits look heavenward.

“Listen, my son.”

These are the famous words with which the Rule of St Benedict begins. Before anything else, before any reference to God, the Bible or the Church, Benedict commands his monks to listen. But this word, listen, is not to be translated casually. It denotes acute attention. Someone once described it to me as the way a doctor will listen with concentration using his stethoscope.

To listen has its root in the same word as to obey. The person listening is doing so from choice, from will, desirous of following what is being offered. So listening of this sort is the first step in obedience. We have to listen to hear what God wants. Jesus was always telling his followers to listen.

Listening of this sort is not superficial, surface listening. And it is not just done with the ears, but with the eyes, nose, through taste, touch, the mind and the heart. It can happen only when we are attentive and awake to the present moment. Because we are all weak and frail human beings much more often asleep than awake, we find it hard to listen. But we take in more than we consciously know which is why using a prayer like the Examin at the end of the day, alerts us to experiences we were often hardly aware of at the time.

If we listen: try to remain awake and alert, we become aware that God is speaking to us all the time, through everything in creation. We know he speaks through the Word made flesh and through the word of scripture, through art, music, poetry, worship, silence, nature and human relationships. We know he is the God of surprises who sometimes talks to us through quite ordinary small things which we see (or perhaps don’t really see) every day – and then one day we wake up and we have listened with our eyes and the veil over them has gone.

Jesus spoke to us in metaphor and parable, and God still does when we listen with all of our being.   “It is as if…,” Jesus begins his story. One thing puts us in touch with another and the story unfolds or the memory is nudged or consciousness awakens.

Just lately, I have had more opportunity to listen. I have had to be out of the house early to walk the dog so instead of rushing straight to work I have meandered through Launde’s gardens at dawn. Yesterday, as I walked, the sky was clear and the sun was just above the horizon: an extraordinary and huge ball of copper fire backed by a rose-pink sky. Today at the same time, there was mist and darkness, dripping trees, wet undergrowth, and a sense of presence in the shadowed woods. As I walked through the Launde copse, spiders’ webs kept catching my face and when I reached the Calvery and stared up at the figure of Christ which was silhouetted against the lightening sky I saw that a spider had made a web in the armpit of the statue. It hung like lace between arm and rib cage and Christ’s face turned gently towards it, seemed to be observing it – this tiny creature that had made its lair under the protective arm of Christ.

There were the dripping trees, the silhouetted face of Christ turned towards this tiny part of his creation. And there, right there, was the whole world.