Category Archives: world

ADULT FAITH … AND BELONGING

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I’VE RETURNED time and time again in the last couple of years to the writings of Diarmuid O’Murchu in the quest I’ve engaged in all my life: the search for Adult Faith. In his book of that name O’Murchu quotes the late John O’Donohue:

Our modern hunger to belong is particularly intense. An increasing majority of people feel no belonging. We have fallen out of rhythm with life. The art of belonging is the recovery of the wisdom of rhythm.

John O’Donohue, cited by Diarmuid O’Murchu

Adult Faith, Growing in Wisdom and Understanding, page 139

I’ve witnessed a spiritual hunger in young and old alike in the past thirty years – along with a reluctance to partake of a “spiritual” diet grown old and stale (albeit that the kind of theological staleness I’m thinking of is too often dressed up as “contemporary”, or “for the young”, or “modern”). Many would rather remain hungry than have to suffer indigestion wrought by leave-your-brain-outside coercion. Me amongst them sometimes. O’Murchu, though, whets my spiritual appetite in these early years of the twenty-first century in much the same way that John Robinson reawakened interest, debate and dialogue mid-way through the twentieth.

There is a tendency in all the great religions to pass on religious wisdom through doctrines and creeds, with emphasis on knowing the verbal formulations. Adults are judged to be religious if they can pass on those beliefs to future generations just as they have been passed on to them. But this transmission is often lacking in internalized understanding; the neophyte learns the formula, and frequently is unable to apply it to daily life in an integrated way.

The bigger challenge is the realisation that we are all endowed with an inner transparency for the holy, for the mystery we popularly call “God”. We are programmed internally in the power of living spirit, always inviting us to attune more deeply to the Great Spirit who infuses the whole of creation. Whether we adopt a religion or not, we are innately spiritual and will remain so throughout our entire lifespan. For contemporary adults, this awareness is quite widespread and is raising formidable challenges for the meaning and place of formal religion in human living.

ibid. page 14

It was precisely Jesus’ own raising formidable challenges for the meaning and place of formal religion in human living that attracted me long ago to follow him. I’m still attracted, and still formidably – albeit willingly – challenged. When we’re able to rise to Jesus’ challenge to rid ourselves of outdated and outmoded shibboleths on the one hand, and perpetually to align ourselves with Divine Mystery on the other,  we begin to roll away the stone from the tomb. And in doing so begin to glimpse new ways of belonging, in an altogether more “catholic” universe. We wean ourselves away from the life of the “whited sepulchre” and find ourselves nudged towards the joy and belonging of perpetual resurrection.

MAXIMILIAN’S BAPTISM

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THE FULL HOUSE for the joy-filled Baptism of Maximilian this morning gives me (another) opportunity to head up this post with my very favourite account, by a simply wonderful narrator, of Jesus’ Baptism! But more than that, it’s always such a joy when our House for the Church is full of people come to celebrate the goodness of God and the richness of the gifts we revel in. And there’s no greater gift to a family than that of an infant. Nor, perhaps, any greater responsibility laid upon older shoulders. Bringing infants to Baptism in and into the House of the Lord provides glorious opportunity for all of us to reflect upon the giftedness and gratuitousness of our lives, upon our hopes and our aspirations, what – in co-creating with, and in, and surrounded by God – we want to make of our world, our humanity, our society, our church – for Maximilian, for ourselves, and for God.

“I baptise with water”, said John the Baptist. One who will come after me will baptise with Holy Spirit. And so it came to pass. Today and every day humankind is baptised “new every morning” by the Spirit of Divine Grace and Love. Perhaps that’s why Maximilian and his wonderful parents were smiling so much in our sacramental celebration of the fact this morning. Perhaps that’s why people had travelled from far and wide to celebrate the gift and the treasure. Yes! – wherever and whenever humankind is “baptised” in the Spirit of God we can rest assured that the Source of our Life continues to turn the world upside down. “Whoever has seen (this human) me has seen the Father” said the anointed Jesus to Philip. And this morning he might have said “whoever has seen Maximilian has seen the Father”. What a joy, what a commission, what a responsibility – this living of the Life and Love of God in and through each one of us, dear created people.

DIVINE PARENT,
Mother and Father, Sister and Brother of us all,
in company with Jesus,
in the power of your Spirit,
with prophets, priests and royal leaders,
and with every woman, man and child
upon the face of the earth,
we bless you for the gift of life and of abundance.
And as we bless you we also ask
your blessing for ourselves that we may be
inspired, strengthened and encouraged daily
to share that life and that abundance
throughout the world.

TELEPHONES FOR ONE THING …

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Bede Griffiths (17 December 1906 – 13 May 1993), born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion), was a British-born Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India.

I READ FR BEDE GRIFFITHS’ A New Vision of Reality way back in 1989 when it was published. Formerly a Benedictine monk at Prinknash Abbey, Fr Bede, the book’s dustjacket informs, left England in 1955 to travel to India to assist in the foundation of Kurisumala Ashram, a monastery of the Syrian rite in Kerala. In 1968 he moved to Saccidananda Ashram in Tamil Nadu by the sacred river Cauvery. This Ashram (founded in 1950) was a pioneer attempt to found a Christian community in India which would incorporate the customs of a Hindu ashram and the traditional forms of Indian life and thought. It seeks to become a centre where people of different religious traditions can meet together in an atmosphere of prayer and grow together towards that unity in Truth which is the goal of all religions.

I’m a devotee of Brother David Steindl-Rast whose website Gratefulness pointed me to the old VHS tape footage of Fr Bede (above) which is simply priceless …

You see, for me, coming to America from India – the complexity of life! All these telephones for one thing, you know, and cars and tv and so on. It’s very wonderful in its way but [in India] in the simplicity, you seem to get an integrity, your whole life becomes more whole … if people can learn to simplify their lives, you know, at least in part – some sphere of simplicity where you can let go and be simple in the presence of God …

Bede Griffiths never lost his grip of the most fundamental requirement for a child of God: living in the presence of God. His / her entire life story arises therefrom. But we human beings are forgetful as Bishop Kelvin Wright of Dunedin (another prophet possessed of “a new vision of reality” in our own day) wrote a day or two ago …

These empty worship shells scattered around the countryside are the signs of the death of a particular religious infrastructure. I look at them with such fascination, I think, because they represent a process which is still continuing. A particular way of meeting the spiritual needs of our society is disappearing because it no longer meets the needs of our society, and still we are preoccupied with preserving it: keeping our buildings open and making sure our functionaries are paid and making sure the committee structures which kept the whole system turning over are filled with the fewer and older and wearier people who still give us allegiance. I think we have missed – are missing – the point.

The role of the church is to introduce people to the Living God and open them to the transforming power of the presence of God. Gradually we have forgotten to do this. We have forgotten how to do this. We have forgotten, even, that we are supposed to do this. And quite naturally, and quite rightly, the infrastructure we have created precisely to help us to do this crumbles and dies.

The old churches tell me one thing and they tell it to me clearly and loudly: The church must facilitate personal transformation or it must cease to exist. It is time to forget the infrastructure except to the extent that it facilitates the one essential task of the Church. As my Lord tells me, “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the rest will be added to you as well.”

Personal transformation before ecclesiastical transformation,  that’s the secret. Jesus changed individual hearts before he changed church. Personal transformation begets ecclesiastical transformation, and thereafter societal transformation. Bede Griffiths, Roger of Taizé, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Kelvin Wright … might all have worn the name badge Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion). And that’s where personal transformation begins: in compassion, first for oneself, and then for all other created persons and things, and that (Christ-like) compassion leads to “some sphere of simplicity” where we can “let go and be simple in the presence of God.”

In other words, we re-member. How lovely that an old VHS tape (oh, the simplicity of such things!) should bring Fr Bede to hearts and minds in 2011. How glad he might be to read Kelvin’s Available Light, even from the perspective of his now living entirely within it. Brother David, I’m grateful.

A BRIGHT VISION …

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GREAT WORSHIP THIS MORNING, Trinity Sunday. Our parish church, it seems to me, is developing an ever deepening vocation to openness and inclusivity, to a bright vision of a world where men, women and children live in the embrace of “the Peace of God that passeth all understanding.” And nobody gives the impression of smugness. Nobody gives the impression that they think the fulfilment of such a vision is going to be easy (we’re all very familiar with the image of the crucified Jesus, and with images of Holocaust, and genocide, and – most recently – burned cathedral and churches in Sudan).

Nobody feels entirely equipped either, whether individually or corporately. Many of us, and especially me, would think of ourselves as theological or religious or political “lightweights”, glad to recall that Jesus spoke of fondness for the simple and for the meek. And again, many of us feel called more to stillness, silence, prayer and contemplation than to the more readily obvious or demonstrable agitating or “action”. But the truth is that, week by week, there’s a vision taking shape … and the vision involves the glory of the Lord Creator filling heaven, earth with its glory stored. And there’s a fountain welling up within us, a fountain of desire to sing: “Unto Thee be glory given. Holy, holy, holy Lord.”

And the glory of God is there to be seen in every part and detail of his Creation, every day of our lives. The glory of God is to be seen in children, women and men of every faith tradition under the sun, and in those who would lay no claim to having a particular faith tradition. The glory of God is to be seen in sun and sea and moon and sky, and in Creation’s daily asking “Why?”.

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In the metaphor of “Trinitarian” faith – our human attempt at imagining, at putting into words, how relationship or communion works within the Godhead – we can recognise the Father showing the Son who he is, and the Son showing the Spirit who she is, and the Spirit showing the Father who he is, and the Divine embracing all created things and showing that Creation who it is. Matter alive with the Spirit, the breath of God – so that there’s absolutely no avoiding that if “my matter” matters then all matter matters. And we’re all “the Body of Christ” in the sense that we’re all a body anointed – with the Divine breath of life.

And when matter matters vocations start to spring up from the dark earth. Vision reaches towards light. Communities seek to create communion, to “repent”, to turn around and look at life and Creation in new ways. Communities start to pray that life in this world may be “put right”.

Paul Deakin has been charting his vocational journey. Rachael Elizabeth has, too. But – gloriously – they’re not alone. There’s a “bright vision” in the hearts and lives of churchwardens, too. And of church council members, and of children’s workers, youth leaders, study groups, prayer groups, growth action strategy and daily, quiet pray-ers.

Many years ago when co-leading a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land I was struck, as were many in the party, by frequent repetition of Psalm 122 whilst we were there: “O pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee.” And – mindful of a translation of “Jerusalem” as “Vision of Peace” – 60 or more people got into the daily praying of these words:

O pray for the peace of the Vision of Peace.
They shall prosper that love thee.

Something of that prayer and something of that vision was present in our Trinitarian worship this morning, and for more than a few of us it rang true that that kind of worship is “the party where God is, and always was, and always will be.” Pray for the peace of the Vision of Peace. Let the Vision rise brighter. The Lord God has placed the key into our own hands.

GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN

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ARCHBISHOP TUTU’S new book God is not a Christianwas published on the 6th May. I’ve only just spotted it but will speedily make up for the lateness. Here’s a snippet:

Surely it is good to know that God (in the Christian tradition) created us all (not just Christians) in his image, thus investing us all with infinite worth, and that it was with all humankind that God entered into a covenant relationship, depicted in the covenant with Noah when God promised he would not destroy his creation again with water. Surely we can rejoice that the eternal word, the Logos of God, enlightens everyone — not just Christians, but everyone who comes into the world; that what we call the Spirit of God is not a Christian preserve, for the Spirit of God existed long before there were Christians, inspiring and nurturing women and men in the ways of holiness, bringing them to fruition, bringing to fruition what was best in all. We do scant justice and honor to our God if we want, for instance, to deny that Mahatma Gandhi was a truly great soul, a holy man who walked closely with God. Our God would be too small if he was not also the God of Gandhi: if God is one, as we believe, then he is the only God of all his people, whether they acknowledge him as such or not. God does not need us to protect him. Many of us perhaps need to have our notion of God deepened and expanded. It is often said, half in jest, that God created man in his own image and man has returned the compliment, saddling God with his own narrow prejudices and exclusivity, foibles and temperamental quirks. God remains God, whether God has worshippers or not.

An ordinand asked me, ten years or more ago, “why do you think Desmond Tutu is always smiling?” I answered at the time “Because he’s a big, big man” … and today this snippet affirms something else I’ve often said of him … “who has a big, big heart”. Gandhi was indeed “truly a great soul”. So is Tutu. Any human being would do well in seeking to emulate both. And I’m ever ready to say and to pray “Thanks be to Thee my Lord Jesus Christ for all women and men of goodwill.”

NOT I, RABBI SURELY?

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NOT I, RABBI SURELY? (Matthew 26.25). Ah, but that’s the point. There’s no surely about it. Not I, Rabbi? Thus said Jesus’ disciples. Not I, Rabbi? And thus say you and me. And there’s danger in anyone’s thinking (or being persuaded by others) that their faithfulness is a better, truer kind than everyone else’s. There’s danger in anyone’s thinking that their discipleship is more open to life-giving relationship with God than another’s. Danger: because our own “certainties” wrong-foot us.

When push comes to shove we’re not very brave! When push comes to shove we’re too quick to cover our own base. And we get by that way until the inevitable day when the tables get turned. Someone else’s certainties are hell bent on disposing of us. That’s warfare – and war seems to us as cruel as hell when bullet and bomb are headed in our direction. Terror consumes us when we find ourselves on the wrong side of any fence when the heat gets turned up. Not I, Rabbi surely? – said Judas. And very shortly afterwards he hung at the end of his tether, tragically unable to spend his wages.

“The Son of Man is going to his fate, as the Scriptures say he will.” How do the Scriptures know? Because they’ve been written by men too quick to say Not I, Rabbi surely? – by human persons, like you and me, who have always known, deep down, that any person’s insistence on being absolutely more in the right than another will, sure as eggs are eggs, lead to sons of men going to their fate. Until we stop kidding ourselves.

MAGDALENA

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CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT’S The Meaning of Mary Magdalene has been such a gift to me this year; and so, more recently, has Jan Richardson, and her In the Sanctuary of Women, both of which books I’ve been revelling in, and recommending widely.

I’ve often spoken of my undying gratitude for something the late and great Archbishop Michael Ramsey said – I believe quite frequently – and once to me and a small group of doting ‘disciples’ gathered around him in my small rooms in Salisbury 30+ years ago: (Gleefully and with a slight stammer) “We’re the early Christians!”

How glad I’ve been to recall the truth and the depth of the archbishop’s wisdom! How glad to be a disciple alive today – 2000 years (only!) after Jesus and Mary Magdalene and their friends graced and anointed human encounters – glad to be alive in a wide world and in wide faith communities that are still being blessed, and still being graced, with new and ever deeper understandings of what it means to be fully human; to be anointed, to be loved, and graced, and held (even “after the Cross”) and sustained, and still learning.

And tonight I fell upon this achingly beautiful video produced and gifted to the world (thanks be to God) by Jan Richardson and her own “sweetheart” Garrison Doles. May it bless a wider and more humane humankind, and awaken new riches in all of us. May we know, and feel, and be thankful for, and above all understand, passiontide - Christ’s and all peoples’ passiontide – in new and personal ways. May we delight in the Love of the God who sees the deepest and truest beauty in us. May we know the fullness of the blessing of Life. May we hear Life say “Today: today you will be with me in paradise”.

ARROWS

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Oscar, Bishop of Newala, and Mama Agnes Mnung'a at St Michael & All Angels, Bramhall, 13 iii 2011

HEARTS AND MINDS in Bramhall have travelled far afield today. Japan has been plainly in our sights. There’s something numbing about our outsiders’ view of her terrible – and still terrifying – plight. Bishop Nick Baines articulates the reflections of countless witnesses in these past few days:

Massive catastrophes such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan not only remind the world of (a) the fragility of life, (b) the commonality of human lives and (c) the contingency of all life, but also render as insignificant luxuries many of the preoccupations that drive our energies. (They might also provide an attentiveness smokescreen behind which the unscrupulous will increase their violence while the world and its media are distracted – think ‘Gaddafi‘.)

via Nick Baines’s Blog.

Hearts here have also been with the Bishop, priests and people of the newly created Diocese of Newala in Southern Tanzania with whom our parish established a link on the occasion of its own Centenary Year in 2010. Bishop Oscar’s welcome homily this morning sharpened up our thoughts about significant and insignificant luxuries good and properly. He’s currently living and working 2 hours away from his wife’s home as the bishop’s house is yet to to be completed. It’s especially good, therefore, that we’ve been able to welcome them both to Bramhall for this visit. And to reflect a bit on what Bishop Oscar believes the Church’s resources, the Church’s “arrows” are for:

In Psalm 127 the Psalmist reminds us that the Power of God is available to us for whatever good we want to achieve. He opens the Psalm, though, with a caution – “Unless”. God must be in our plans and in all our efforts used when we are doing anything.

It is not my intention to tell you about the place of God in our lives; but the Psalmist touched my mind with his words in verse 4 of this psalm:

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior … “

The psalmist draws a picture of a warrior in a battlefield. He is armed with a bow and arrows. The Psalmist speaks of arrows in the hands of a warrior, not of those which are in the quiver.

Arrows which are in the quiver are useless! They have to be in the hand of a warrior, so that they can be used. Arrows which are in the quiver can get rust and lose their sharpness! Arrows – to be weapons – must be taken out of the quiver.

The Church today is blessed with resources which can boost the ministry and spread the Word of God. The Church has personnel and materials which can be used. But unfortunately most of them are still in a quiver, getting rusty and blunt.

Arrows cannot move on their own from a quiver and jump into the hand of a warrior. An effort has to be made. I picture the Church being both, the warrior and the arrows. I picture the faithful ones to be the arrows, I picture the dynamic churches to be warriors. It is a question of coordination. If a person assists the warrior to take his arrows out of a quiver, this warrior will be armed, equipped to stand in a battlefield.

Look at yourself as an arrow. Where do you stand? Are you in a quiver or in the hands? What do you do to help the warrior to have arrows out of the quiver?

It is my hope that, through this friendship between your church and our diocese we can recognise the gifts which we have and do all it takes to make sure that we put them into good use for the Glory of God.

We are those little arrows, in a quiver. Please help us to move and go into the hands, ready to be used. Amin.

Unimagined resources on a colossal scale are going to be required in Japan in the coming years. And a brand new Diocese with extremely limited financial resources is going to need some arrows too. And building the Church in Bramhall still needs steady aim. Where are the arrows? And how can we set them free – wherever in the world, and whatever kind of “arrow” is locally required – to do the job they’re meant to do. What drives our energies?

LIBERATING HANDSHAKE

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Henry Garrood with a friend, 2010

FOR NEARLY THIRTY YEARS I’ve had the honour and privilege of leading Services of Remembrance and Thanksgiving at War Memorials in various towns and villages in England. On each and every occasion I have been profoundly moved by the tenacity and the faithfulness with which servicemen and women gather year after year to honour fallen comrades.

Henry Garrood is a member of my church congregation in Bramhall. His eyes and mine are full of tears when we recall a recent experience the not-far-short of 90 year old Henry experienced in Holland. 65 years after the tough fighting, in October 1944, that led to the liberation of ‘s-Hertogenbosch Henry marched (or shuffled! as he has it) in a memorial parade. He and his comrades were handed roses and tulip bulbs by locals as they marched by.

When they arrived at the mediaeval city hall a young mother, holding her 18 month old son in her arms, stepped forward to ask of Henry: “Will you please shake my little one’s hand? It will be my joy when he grows up to tell him that he shook hands with one of the men who liberated our city.”

Henry was later presented with a medal commemorating “65 years of freedom and friendship”. And he’s profoundly proud of that medal. But not nearly so proud, not nearly so touched, not nearly so grateful for his medal as he is, and will always be, for the invitation to shake the hand of one of Holland’s youngest sons.

For this is Remembrance in action.

The poet Abraham Joshua Heschel, memorably described as a person “afflicted with a deep reverence for all human beings”, wrote these stunningly beautiful words in Yiddish, later translated for us into English. I recite his poem “People’s Eyes Wait” today for Henry Garrood and his honoured comrades: and for a world in which the deepest human need is for an increase in tenderness:

People’s eyes wait for me
like candle wicks for a light.
Shamed brothers beg my help,
deceived sisters dream of consolation.
And I, with stubborn boldness, have promised
that I will increase tenderness in this world –
and it seems to me that I will, in time
move on through this earth
with the brightness of all the stars
in my eyes!

Thank you Henry. Thank you Bob. Thank you Bruce, Thank you Max and Elizabeth, and Edith, and Joyce … thank you, thank you, to the world’s liberators.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning:

We will remember them.

For PURE FM 107.8

NEW WORLD COMING

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There’s a new world coming and it’s just around the bend
there’s a new world coming, this one’s coming to an end
there’s a new voice calling, you can hear it if you try
and it’s growing stronger with each day that passes by
there’s a brand new morning, rising clear and sweet and free
there’s a new day dawning that belongs to you and me
there’s a new world coming, the one we’ve had visions of
coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love

Cass Elliot

I’VE BEEN TALKING RECENTLY WITH PARISHIONERS who have been in South Africa, in Tanzania, in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, in Pakistan, India, the United States and Canada, Paris, Madrid and Rome. And with people who were thrilled to the depths of their hearts by Pope Benedict’s recent journey from Rome to the United Kingdom, and by the images we’ve all seen of many a warm embrace.

The world is becoming smaller; there is a new world coming, a new day dawning. As we travel further, as we encounter each other more deeply, as we see the heart and the hope in persons or people profoundly different from us, gay or straight, male or female, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Taoist, Sikh or Jew—or any other kind of “different”, we’ll learn to embrace each other with a new warmth. The differences that divide humankind must be allowed to take second place to the Divine and the human longing for peace, security, and love.

Thank God that we’ve all been shown that it’s perfectly possible to embrace people we don’t agree with on every point of detail. For come the ultimate Harvest we’ll all be held in and by and with the same embrace. Come, thankful people, come. Come in peace, come in joy, come in love.