Tag Archives: Rachel Mann

DAZZLING DARKNESS

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DazzlingDarkness

ANDREW SHANKS writes of Rachel Mann, in his Foreword to her Dazzling Darkness, that she represents

“a whole other species of religious faith … something like an option for all-transformative ultimate acceptance”

- and of a person whose faith is

“nothing other than a principled recognition of the very clearest-eyed honesty – precisely, as a sacred ideal”.

This sounded, at the genesis as it were, like a description of God’s Christ to me. By the end of the book I was indeed dazzled, convinced that Shanks described both Rachel Mann and Jesus of Nazareth with equal clarity. Within days I’d distributed a dozen copies to some of the people I care about most, and I’ve brought this book into countless conversations. Here is courage and honesty for which I’ve shed tears of gratitude – whilst heart and soul and mind and body somersaulted over every beautifully written page.

Honesty for Jesus of Nazareth involved Gethsemane – I’m still haunted by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus: “take this cup away from me for I don’t want to taste its poison”.* And I’m haunted because I know I owe a response to that Christ – for his grace and passion. Rachel Mann’s journeying towards truth has agonised in just such a garden, truly a “real presence”, this woman, of the vulnerable, open, incarnate body of Christ now on earth. And I’m positively haunted because I know I owe Rachel Mann for her grace, too. Haunted by Grace, by pure, unexpected, earthy gift. Touched and inspired by Anointed-ness, by Christ-likeness-in-brokenness, in Rachel Mann, and if in Rachel then also in every other child, woman and man trying to come to terms with being breathed into life – upon earth or in heaven.

And this Christ is com-passion, truly, with-suffering, a pain-bearing-alongside - an Anointed-one arrived in this world not so much to be a religious enterprise as a fully human Jesus-shaped one – one unafraid, like Rachel Mann, to “play wild language games” with God, too; one unafraid to live in and to get alongside real, frequently silenced “grubby bodies” in the poignantly agonising whilst yet laughter-filled Word-game of life. Truly Jesus knew what it was to be betwixt and between, caught up between one place – one “self” and another. Entre-nous.

The broken middle

This is the “broken middle” in which Rachel Mann has lived much of her life – and to which I believe the twenty-first century Church is struggling to hear herself being called. No longer convinced Evangelical nor convinced Catholic, hardly daring to be partisan at all, but – nearer the Word of Truth, I suspect – being willing to live in the broken middle – somewhere, and in some size and shape, that’s a bit different for all of us, depending on where we began, and upon where thus far along our way we’ve ended up. Betwixt and between. Becoming, yes, becoming. Works in progress – in the theatre of life in which, painstakingly and daily, in the midst of both laughter and tears, “each loosened bolt and nut is a making vulnerable, a loosening of false layers of identity, and a making space for God, the one who is easily silenced, to speak”.

Rachel Mann knows what it is to feel isolated and broken. And also – her Twitter-feed celebrates – what it is to delight in a platter of fish, chips and peas. That’s why she’s good news in today’s Church. Her sheer goodness and dogged perseverance is an epiphany of the kind I deeply need to sustain my hope for the future, to give me hope for a world, for a Church, for myriad different religious traditions, that are teeming with the lives of “The Other”. Rachel’s humanity could not be other than a positive encouragement to many readers and to many who meet her in person. I’m sure she’ll always be catalyst for many a real metanoia, many a real “turning around and thinking again”. And God knows, now as always, that the Church needs, that I need, to come to a truer repentance. I’m still profoundly shocked as I recall the opening service of the Lambeth Conference in 2008. Bishops gathered from all over the world cheerily booming out the hymn “All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place” even as security guards were on hand to deny entrance to “the otherness” (God help us, the Christ-likeness) in Bishop Gene Robinson.

Dazzling Darkness isn’t just a sensitive, lived work about the extraordinary complexities of long-term illness, human sexuality, bewilderment, spiritual darkness, desolation, isolation and alienation – though it is all of these: this is ultimately a book about being an expression of the Anointed, the Christ, for our life and times. A book about being planted firmly in the midst of family and memory; about instinct’s perpetual yearning for the peace it intuits will be found in one’s own distinctive space, and place; and unpredictable, sometimes unexpected human love, acceptance and recognition – within and without presently known institutions, church or marriage. This is a book about faith and hope and love prevailing despite what seem impossible odds. This is philosophical and theological reflection of the highest order. This is truly birthing poetry and prose about co-creativity with God. A book about what it means to live caught between darkness and light, joy and pain, sickness and gladness, holiness in wholeness. About Adam and Eve. About mankind, in-between-kind, and womankind. About you and me. About incarnation. About being in the flesh. About personal integrity and authenticity. About being real in the public square. About the call of God’s Spirit constantly to re-examine and re-interpret Law and Prophets. About imagination. About journey. About redemption – being shown the way home to ourselves.

Dazzling Darkness is the most important book I’ve read in thirty years as a priest, and though I’ll limp toward the finishing line in “the race that is set before us”, the Christ-likeness I see in Rachel Mann spurs me onwards. I will keep trying.

* Gethsemane, from Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd Webber

IN YOUR VERY SKIN

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I’M A LATECOMER to J K Rowling’s Harry Potter – a fault that cannot be laid at the door of my daughters, nor of a number of my clerical colleagues – past, present, or possibly future – all of whom have been chasing me during the past ten years to sit down with number 1. But 52-year-old-dodderers are still capable of being persuaded sometimes – and I was enthralled to read the Rev’d Rachel Mann’s theological reflections on Harry Potter in the Church Times recently, and I’ve listened carefully to the enthusiastic reflections of a number of very thoughtful friends, finished the first book, and even seen the first film. And near the end (yes: of the beginning! – it could be another ten years before I make it to the currently-in-the-cinemas end) …

(Albus Dumbledore to Harry) ‘Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realise that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign … to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection for ever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.’

And now this latecomer wants to say “Amen”. And as I picture Jesus chatting quietly with Lazarus, Martha and Mary in their little house in Bethany, and with other dear ones, in other times and places, I can only imagine that had J K Rowling been storytelling in their neighbourhood, then, He might well have shared her parables amongst His friends. At any rate, His friends then and now came to understand that to have been loved deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection for ever. And so we aspire to love like that. Deeply. So that “it is in your very skin”. It “leaves its own mark”. It makes communion. For ever.

Yes: Amen.

9 ENG LIT 9.45 MATHS 11 HAPPINESS

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DR ANTHONY SELDON, Master of Wellington College gave Church Times its Back Page interview this week.

… We started the “happiness classes” at Wellington in 2006, grounding them on the Positive Psychology of Professor Martin Seligman. He tried to move people from a sort of minus five state of fear and loneliness and unhappiness to a sort of OK state, and then to a plus-five kind of flourishing state. We try to build up children’s resilience, because you can’t stop bad things happening to them.

We try to change their mindset to one of being grateful — which involves things like thinking of three things to be grateful for before going to sleep. We encourage them to pay serious attention to their physical body because with a healthy body it’s easier to have a healthy mind. And we encourage young people to give to others, because the core of our model is looking after others …

Truly, there are some marvellous and extraordinary people in the world today. In the last few days alone (to keep this post brief) I’ve been awe-struck by the grace, ease and “possibilities” of – and advocated by – Benjamin Zander; by the prophetic imagination of Dee Hock and friend, David Herbert, who recognised it early; by the poetic inspiriting of the poets Rachel Mann, and Jo Shapcott and Daljit Nagra, (to whom Rachel brought my attention), and Sally Purcell (to whom Fr Roger Clarke brought my attention).

I’m still reeling from having delighted in the artistic majesty in The King’s Speech; and Maggi Dawn tweeted her friends in the direction of what will doubtless be a blockbuster, The Insatiable Moon, in British Cinemas from March.  And I see, every day, the marvellous and the extraordinary in the family, friends, parishioners, fellow citizens all around me.

And today the Master of Wellington College speaks of happiness classes, of Martin Seligman and Lord Layard. Imagine: 9 English Lit; 9.45 Maths; 11 Double Happiness. Day after day there’s something new and glorious to get stuck into. As the old hymn has it: “New every morning is the love …”

When all is said and done, there’s yet more to be done and said. Some world-changing to be brought about, some world-creating to be engaged in, some justice and peace to be striven for, some hunger and thirst to be satisfied, some shelter to be provided, wells to be plumbed, and gardens to be raised up, good earth to roam, and seas and skies to be traversed; all that is really Real. Truly, it’s a wonderful life.

WELCOME MESSY CHURCH

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MESSY CHURCH will be celebrated with vigour at St Michael & All Angels, Bramhall on Saturday 2nd April 2011 when Mothering Sunday will be the theme. And that’s great, I think, because all of us who are engaged in mothering and in nurturing, and in being mothered and nurtured, all of us – men, women and children alike – know that Church, and mothering, and nurturing, ARE messy (and happy and sad and glorious) because LIFE is, and that’s what all our mothering and all our nurturing are about. Life.

Messy Church will hopefully remind us that Church is about Messy Life long before it’s about belonging to a religious institution. Messy Church, like any Church should, will celebrate with children and women and men of all ages that we’re alive.

Messy Church will celebrate life’s wonderfully creative goodness precisely because we know that life is tough, too, and that it is creative goodness – that of the Creator and the Creator’s work in and through us – that changes us, raises us, mothers us, nurtures us, loves us.

Messy Church, like any Church should, will tell us the story, the biblical epic of our own lives as well as the story of other lives. We and they, our lives and theirs, are one and the same. Connected, messy, broken, even. But growing, and laughing, and learning. And loved … until God’s Kingdom come, on earth, as it is in heaven.

Messy Church will change us, and urge us, and inspire us, and cheer us on our way. I met with our wonderful Young Church Leaders tonight to share details of the preparations. First we were “still for the presence of the Lord” for a space. And then, amongst many other words and plans and laughter I read, for the third time today, Rachel Mann’s poem:

From: Presiding From the Broken Middle

And we shall speak a song God gave us
And we shall find bread in the stones we found
And we shall receive blessing when rejection is given
And we shall arise when we’ve been beaten down.

And we shall sing a song God gave us
And we shall break bread on holy ground
And we shall proclaim a blessing in a world that is riven
And we shall stand and know we are found.

And we shall roar a song God gave us
And we shall share bread among the lost and found
And God will heal from the broken middle
and with grace and hope and love astound.

via Rachel Mann Anglican priest, poet, musician, writer, metal reviewer, poetry – Theology.

May God bless and heal us in our Messy Church, and in our messy church, from the broken middle and with grace and hope and love astound. I hope to see you on the 2nd April. Or any day.

WHAT’S IT (SAYING) TO ME?

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click photo to enlarge

I’VE BEEN PONDERING the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I don’t want to let it go again just yet, don’t want simply to consign it to next January, Sunday’s having come and gone, and having made a happy visit to “someone else’s church”, because the question, the important question that such a week begs is to do with what kind of “life in all its fullness” do we think we’re looking for? What might the Divine will for unity be? What’s the ‘theme for 2011′ really asking us to see? -

One in the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. Acts 2 : 42-47

- what kind of teaching were the apostles one in? What kind of fellowship? What’s the breaking of bread about? What kind of prayer? Why does anybody care? What has any of this got to say to me, about me? Because it must be first about something that matters to, that speaks to me, before I can hope to know, to feel in another human soul, any kind of real unity. And yet I do know and I do feel real unity between me and many another human person who calls me beyond my “I” to a life-enhancing “We”. And not all of them by a long chalk walk the spiritual paths that the Church would always recognise as Christianity.

And I’m becoming more and more sure that a great deal of that knowing and a great deal of that feeling emanates from my quietly growing ability to “let it be”. The repenting, the metanoia, the turning around to look at life – and at this and that – from a different angle keeps confronting me with “let it be”.

The apostles’ teaching encourages us to follow in The Way of Jesus whose life was an essay in being free from anxious thought about anything. “Behold the birds of the air and the lilies of the field which neither reap nor spin, yet your heavenly Father cares for them”. The fellowship the apostles shared arose from their attendance at the same school of life. The bread they broke and shared spoke of hospitality given and received by a whole humankind that simply wouldn’t be alive without it! And then there was the poetry of their prayer. That which lay within them, “in there”, that every human being on earth is – one might almost say – pre-programmed to need to share. For ever and ever Amen. Even unto martyrdom if necessary.

Where’s our unity? How shall we love God and one another more beautifully? Over thirty years ago Brother Roger Schütz of Taizé and many hundreds of young pilgrims from every part of the globe sowed a seed that’s still alive in me. A seed that has flourished and been nurtured and watered through years of ensuing worship. And the gentle breeze of the Spirit that now wafts through her leaves and branches whispers “let it be” … that’s how you’ll come to know life in all its fullness, that’s where you’ll find your real self … “let it be” … that’s where you’ll find real unity.

What was it that Rachel Mann was “saying” to me over the weekend? And Giles Fraser, too:

I WONDER what it might be like for us religious types to let go of our need to matter, and to embrace our irrelevance. I suspect that we might be more relaxed and a little more attractive. – Rachel Mann

Forget church politics. The wilderness – even an ecumenical one – is an opportunity to discover what is most important: to search out the source of life, and to share that life with others. This is what all baptised Christians are called to do. – Giles Fraser

What might the Divine will for unity be? What’s the ‘theme for 2011′ really asking us to see? And what’s any of it saying to, what’s any of it got to do with me? And (in this year of the AV) with thee?

O MY GOD AT THE HEART …

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Jo Shapcott reads I go inside the tree

WOW! I SAID, at Saturday’s breakfast table. And I was reading the Church Times! Rachel Mann, Manchester Cathedral‘s poet in residence and Priest in Charge of St Nicholas’ Burnage,  just down the road from here, writes: Why the Church should be more like poetry. Convincingly.

POETS are in a curious business. We are, as the poet David Constantine once put it, engaged in “a widening of consciousness, an extension of humanity”. At their best, our words create suggestive effects — effects that may draw attention, among other things, to the transcendent in our midst. Poets are often caught in a creative paradox in which words are both utterly useless and yet intensely powerful.

- says the sometime heavy metal musician (not a genre I’m especially familiar with!). And

Even well-educated people, conversant in literature, generally stumble when it comes to knowing modern poets such as Jo Shapcott, Michael Symmons Roberts, or Daljit Nagra, who are stars in the field.

St Nicholas’ Burnage looks and sounds like a great place to be. It’s website notes that St Nicholas Church rocked  in celebration of Rachel’s 40th birthday. I bet it did. And I want to visit. Preferably when Rachel’s preaching. Back though to the Church Times:

Through their attention to language and its uses, they coin fresh ways for the imagination to be fed. To use the Scottish term for poet: as “Makar”, the poet reveals possibilities that help people dream dreams and have visions. In many ways, poets are little different from people of faith — they want their views to matter — but I suspect that poetry, free from the temptation to moralise, has borne its fall from significance with greater grace.

I WONDER what it might be like for us religious types to let go of our need to matter, and to embrace our irrelevance. I suspect that we might be more relaxed and a little more attractive. Sometimes I sense that the Church of England is like a morally constipated child jumping up and down at the back of the class with its hand in the air, sure that it has the correct answer. At one level, I want to say that we do have the answer; but that answer is more about drawing people into the creative mystery of living than about seeking to legislate for their private or public lives …

All this on page 12. Probably not too late to pick up a copy if you hurry. The paper deserves to sell every copy this week. Giles Fraser on the next page comes across as inspired as Rachel Mann:

A [Week of Prayer for Christian unity] sermon began to form. Forget church politics. The wilderness – even an ecumenical one – is an opportunity to discover what is most important: to search out the source of life, and to share that life with others. This is what all baptised Christians are called to do.

But if you can’t buy the paper I guess a visit to St Nick’s in Burnage, or St Paul’s Cathedral, or St Michael & All Angels Bramhall might do the trick for you. Might help you find the poet that’s lurking in your soul. Might take you “Inside the tree” until the “O, my God, at the heart …”

Way to go Church Times!