Day six of forty…Prayer

As a rule I won’t be blogging on a Sunday, hence the absence of a blog for Day five.

“ Prayer is an unnatural activity”…For many years, even as senior pastor of a large church I knew more about prayer than I ever practised in my own life.”

Bill Hybels, “Too Busy Not to Pray”

It is important that you know that I am not a great pray-er. Prayer, as I was taught it in the church I grew up in, is something I’ve always struggled with. As I’ve got older I’ve relaxed a bit more about my inability to have a serious ministry of prayer. These days I often just chat with God as I go through my day, as things come up, and this seems to be OK.

Clearly the disciples arrived at a similar point in their relationship with Jesus. Thick as they could sometimes be they couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be refreshed, envisioned and motivated by the times of prayer that he snatched with the Father in the middle of his very busy life. So one day, one of Jesus followers asked the inevitable question…

[1] … One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him,“ Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” [2] He said to them, “When you pray, say: “ ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. [3] Give us each day our daily bread. [4] Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. ‘ ”

Luke 11: 1-4 NIV

It seems likely, as John Pritchard suggests in “The Journey” that the disciples were aware that John the Baptist had taught his followers a sort of ‘team prayer’. So they ask Jesus to help them by providing something similar.

I think sometimes, particularly in non-conformist churches, we lose out on the sense of oneness with other believers through our neglect of the powerful simplicity of this ‘team prayer’…we should pray it more. Jesus teaches a lot of other things about prayer, both in story and by example.

Over the years a number of things have greatly helped my prayer life. Getting up early, while the house is still quiet is one of them (although that was hard with very young children). Going off to lonely, solitary places is another. Conversely, praying with other people is sometimes helpful. Methods developed in the church through the ages also help: from the Benedictines I learned Lectio Divina, praying with Scripture, and the Jesuits taught me the Daily Examen. As a member of the Northumbria Community I grew to love the stability of the words of the Daily Office. More recently I’ve discovered apps for my smartphone and web sites of prayers and devotions that really help.

Here are some books an resources that have helped me to spend time with God, talking and listening, in prayer. I’m sure you have favourites of your own.

There may be more recent editions of some of these books; I’ve given you details of copies I own.

Robert Benson, “In Constant Prayer”, Thomas Nelson 2008

Daniel Wolpert, “Creating a Life with God” Upper Room Books 2003

Tony Jones, “The Sacred Way”, Zondervan 2005

Bill Hybels, “Too Busy Not to Pray”, IVP 1988

Northumbria Community, “Celtic Daily Prayer”, now in two volumes, Harper Collins 2015

Mark E Thibodeaux SJ, “Reimagining the Ignatian Examen”, Loyola Press 2015

James Martin SJ, “The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything”, Harper One 2012

Pete Greig, “God on Mute”, Survivor 2007

My favourite prayer app, which just gets better and better, is PrayerMate, which continues to be offered free of charge by Geero.net

All of these resources are no substitute for actually spending time with God!

Day one of forty…Cost

Ash Wednesday 2016

[51] As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem….[57] As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”[58] Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”[59] He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”[60] Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”[61] Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”[62] Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:51; 57-62 NIV

“Family life is holy ground”

Northumbria Community

I am challenged to think that sometimes we followers of Jesus get a bit hung up on the sanctity of family life to the point of almost making it an object of our worship. It is possible to read the gospels with an awareness that Jesus sometimes consider family to be more of a hindrance than a help, which I find quite shocking, if a practical possibility.

I’ve always believe that if Jesus is at the centre of my life, then other relationships will fall into place, and family life will be holy ground, in the sense that it’s the environment in which my faith in Jesus is worked out. So what do we make of Jesus harsh words to the people who expressed a desire to follow Jesus.

A number of years ago the Youth for Christ  band, Alphabet, that I worked with, visited Zimbabwe where we were able to sing and speak to people about faith in Jesus.

Shortly before our visit, a well-known evangelist had visited Bulawayo and reported mass conversions to Jesus. When we arrived the local pastors told us that there was very little evidence that these new converts had ever found their way into the local Christian community.

The first time I spoke about my faith in Jesus, I think it was in a Bulawayo factory, at the end I gave people the opportunity to respond by standing if they wanted to know more or to become a follower of Jesus. I was stunned when every single person rose to their feet. This did not indicate a lack of faith on my part…I’m from the UK where people keep their bottoms firmly on their seats rather than drawing attention to themselves unnecessarily!

Afterwards a local black pastor who’d been with us took me on one side. Rather than encouraging me in my effective evangelistic ministry he delivered an encouraging education on local culture.

“You have to understand,” he explained, “that because you are a visitor people want to please you. If you ask people to stand, they will, out of respect for you, and not necessarily in response to the content of what you’ve said. They’re standing for you, and not for Jesus.”

So, from that time on, whenever I had opportunity to speak, I spent at least as much time spelling out the cost of following Jesus as I did talking about why it was a good thing!

As Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” he must have had an inkling of what sort of reception awaited him. His followers, still refreshingly naïve, seemed to have little clue about what was happening. In that context his determination to make people face up to the consequences of following seems less cruel.

This was not a jolly jaunt to Jerusalem…it was a date with a destiny that might well include death.

 

 

 

Remember!

Today I shared in the special “Remember me” meal that Jesus told us to share in for the first time in a very long time.

Although I haven’t been completely ‘church-less’ since the last time, I’ve shared in worship with the Salvation Army, who, for very understandable historical reasons, don’t celebrate communion, and although the small group that we meet with regularly loves to share food and drink together, as far as I can remember we’ve never shared that meal.

I joined the celebration at the home of the Northumbria Community, of which I used to be a very committed part, and to which I have been drawn again in the way that our life’s journey so often takes us back to places where we started out.

The tiny chapel was filled with members of the house team and people on retreat for a week or a day (like me). Many of us were complete strangers to each other, our state of grace, our joys and our struggles an irrelevant unknown as we shared a hug or handshake of peace and muttered words of blessing, some polite, some intimate. We ate from the same loaf and drank the same wine. Together we remembered the same Jesus, whatever our relationship to him might be.

Rachel Held Evans writes about the many and varied ways that we celebrate communion/Eucharist/the Lord’s Supper/Mass/the breaking of bread, with bread, crackers, special wafers, using wine, grape juice or squash from ornate chalice, Styrofoam cup or miniature plastic cups. The atmosphere, she says, may be celebratory or somber, with organ music, guitars and drums or Gregorian chants.

Then she writes:

“But in every tradition I know, someone, at some point, says, “Remember.”

Remember how God became one of us? Remember how God ate with us and drank with us, laughed with us and cried with us? Remember how God suffered for us, and died for us, and gave his life for the life of the world? Remember? Remember?” From “Searching for Sunday”

I also remember other communions I have shared in…standing in a circle in a prison chapel (I was a visitor!) drinking from the same cup as violent criminals, thieves and sex offenders (When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”)…the climax to rowdy, fun-filled youth weekends…in a black township church in Zimbabwe where the local white Christians never went…with people I’ve been leading on retreat, where suddenly the work that God is doing in a life comes together in a moment of challenge and resolution as the body and blood of Jesus are shared in that oh so familiar but ever powerful meal.

What a graphic demonstration of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ…

“See his body, his blood – know that he has overcome
Every trial we will face.
None too lost to be saved, none too broken or ashamed;
All are welcome in this place.”
Matt Redman “Remembrance”

There’s something very special about this very physical act of remembering Jesus…with food and drink, taste and smell and being together as the body of Christ.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, [Jesus] did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself . . . ‘Do this,’ he said—not believe this but do this—‘ in remembrance of me.’ ” From “An Altar in the World”

The early followers of Jesus took this command very seriously. They made this special meal a central part of every gathering together, large and small in homes and public buildings.

As I sat in the tiny chapel of the Northumbria Community, listening to the sounds of nature and the crackle of the wood-burner, and studying the faces of my fellow celebrants by the flickering light of myriad tea-lights and candles’ I was almost bursting with anticipation as I waited for communion to begin. I deeply regret having been absent from the ‘remember me meal’ for so long.

A Benson Booklist…

This post is the third in a series that begins with Pilgrim Pages 1 and 2. It might make a bit more sense if you read those first…

 

Before I get into the business of making recommendations I need to say that I do not expect that, just because Robert Benson’s books have been formative for me, everyone else will have the same positive response. My wife is a case in point…she read some of one of his books and declared that it did nothing for her, that she found the whole thing heavy going, boring and “only read a little because I just couldn’t get into it”.

But in the hope that some of you might be tempted to ‘have a go’. Here are a few suggestions.

Having been introduced to Robert Benson’s work by reading ‘In Constant Prayer’, I used the list on his website www.robertbensonwriter.com/bookshelf to go right back to the beginning and read everything he’d written in chronological order. The current list is not quite up to date, with three additional books having been written since it was last updated, so you may have to do a little extra spadework yourself. Part of the fun for me was actually sourcing the books…I remember an interesting email conversation with the American publishers of the prayer book and DVD resource ‘Daily Prayer’.

In a letter introducing his latest book, Robert Benson relates how he answers people who ask which books they should read first, to get to know his work:

 “I have always said the first one, ‘Between the Dreaming and the Coming True’ is first, ‘The Echo Within’ is next, a happy accident that seemed the other part of that first and favorite book, though there were twelve years and a dozen books in between.

                        ‘Dancing on the Head of a Pen’ seems the third part. If you want to hear what it is I have been trying to say over and over for my whole writing life, then these are the three to read.”  

Alternatively, you could choose to read thematically…there are two books based on elements of the ‘Rule of Benedict (‘A Good Life’ and ‘A Good Neighbor’) or his books on prayer (‘Living Prayer’ and ‘In Constant Prayer’).

You might prefer to try his less overtly spiritual books (‘The Game’, ‘Home by Another Way’, ‘Digging In’ and ‘Moving Miss Peggy’) or even use his two personally compiled Daily Office books (‘Venite’ and ‘Daily Prayer’…I treasure the second of these as my major alternative to Celtic Daily Prayer,  from the Northumbria Community).

There’s even a coffee-table book, full of beautiful illustrations, to help us prepare for Christmas during the Advent season (‘The Night of the Child’). There are a few more gems that I haven’t chosen to mention.

Whatever way you choose to begin, I would encourage you to make the effort…if the books resonate with you it will have been worth it.

New Beginnings…

Some old friends from Manchester came to stay with us recently, and the end of a week’s retreat with the Northumbria Community. They are exploring the “what next” question that all of us face from time to time, as we sense a change of direction to our life’s journey.

If we take the idea of Life as Pilgrimage seriously, this is a place we will all arrive at from time to time, as just a natural progression to the next stopping point en-route for our final destination.

This year seems to have encompassed change and new beginnings for several members of our family too.

My wife has had a life-changing operation and has started a course of therapy which could be significant. As she winds down her Community Arts business she has also started the first steps towards a new career in nursing.

Several of the children have also started new career paths or are getting ready to move on to the next step in their education. One of them seems settled and happy in the work and place he is in, for the moment at least.

The remaining one has completed her degree course and is now asking that “what next” question.

I find myself most identifying with her. Having arrived at a point where I thought that my passion and calling towards pastoral work in church was going to be re-ignited, and then seeing it all fade away at the last moment I’ve spent the last year trying to pick up the pieces. My other self-employed work seems to be taking a downturn at present, so just from a practical point of view I find myself being nudged towards something new (I think). So the “what next” question is in my sights too.

 I’ve been reading a book recently which has cast some light on my current predicament too. In his book “Holy Discontent”, Bill Hybels writes about our passion, the thing that more than anything else gives us a sense of purpose and fulfilment. I would have said that producing a strong, healthy, caring, growing church would have been my passion, however, Hybels also makes the point that sometimes our passion ‘morphs’ into something new, and we have to recognise and embrace the change. That’s if we have the faintest idea what the change is!.

One thing is certain – the change probably won’t be geographical…Wendy’s new career demands that we stay in The Borders for the foreseeable future, and our new landlords have invested in our home in order to give us a secure, stable and well maintenance home to live in. So where is life as pilgrimage going to take me next, I wonder, and what new beginnings can I anticipate.

Ending…paving the way for new beginnings

It was tempting to look at the stage that corresponds to arrival in a geographical pilgrimage as “success”, but that would be to monstrously oversimplify this area of life-as-pilgrimage. I suppose you could also correlate this stage with death and whatever comes beyond, but that would be to miss out on the value of ending other things well in our lives.

The words “conclusion” and “closure” particularly come to mind. There are many times in life when if we fail to “arrive” in the sense of having reached a point of understanding, acceptance and celebration of what has been, we are unable to move on to what may be.

The end of a relationship, bereavement, moving from one geographical location to another, finishing  a job…all are times of arrival at an ending, and time needs to be taken to mark that ending, to set aside what has gone before in a positive way whether it counts as success or failure.

In the fast-moving world in which we live it is important to give ourselves time to process this ending. We often understand this well in the area of bereavement, but this is only one of the areas of life where it takes real time to “come to terms” with what’s happened. Sometimes it helps to have some kind of ritual, some kind of event, alone or with a group to mark the ending.

Closure and conclusion do not mean that we are striving to forget or set aside what has gone before; they simply point us to the undeniable fact that every beginning must lead to an ending, and the way we deal with that ending will define our next steps…it will either consign us to the past, bitterness and to an ever decreasing sphere of life or it will open the way to new possibilities, another chapter…

I determine amidst all uncertainty

always to trust.

 

I choose to live beyond regret,

and let you recreate my life,

 

I believe you will make a way for me

and provide for me,

if only I trust you

and obey.

 

I will trust you in the darkness and know

that my times are in your hand.

 

I will believe you for my future,

chapter by chapter

until all the story is written.

 

From the Brendan liturgy of the Northumbria Community

The process of pilgrimage – 6 REMEMBERING

The first time I arrived at the end of leading a group on pilgrimage along St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose to Holy Island I found I could not stop walking. Somehow the process of walking, thinking, praying and discovering had become so much a part of me that it was difficult to not be on the move.

In his book called “Urban Iona”, Kurt Neilson describes what happens when he returns from his pilgrimage to Iona, Ireland and Scotland.

“Still walking…My backpack has come through water and fire and faith and doubt and desolation and war and devil’s twisted wish and God’s clear promise. It has come home. But I have not.”

As I reflected on the pilgrimage for a magazine article, I wrote:

“Since finishing the pilgrimage I too have had this same sense of a journey begun, but one which is not yet complete, even though I have come home (and am glad to be there!).

Like Tolkien’s Hobbits I also sing, “The road goes ever on…”. Perhaps it is a good thing to reawaken the knowledge that our time here is transitory, that we are people who are intended to be constantly moving and changing as we push on through life to the great shared mystery of ‘what’s next’.

Journeying is about new horizons, adventures and opportunities, chance encounters with people and places which change us for good or ill, discoveries about ourselves in all our glorious reflection of the image of God and in all our disappointing, fallen brokenness. I travel on with a new sense of expectancy.

For me, at least, the lasting memory among many memories will be an intense experience of what community is and means as we daily shared our lives on the road. This was sharing characterised by relational highs and unbelievable depths, encouraging, supporting, confronting and a sense of achieving something together.

One thing is certain…when we set foot on the shore of Holy Island we were all different from when we set off from Melrose.”

Originally published in CAIM, the magazine of the Northumbria Community (Issue 45 Summer 2008)

This stage of remembering, trying to pin down the significant events and encounters, the changes that have happened to us and the insights into God, ourselves and others that we have gained must be given as much time as it takes for us to truly understand our experience and to appreciate how much it has been absorbed and become a part of who we are becoming. With the benefit of hindsight I can see  that the Cuthbert’s Way pilgrimage  was the starting point of the change of direction in my spiritual journey that has brought me to were I am today.

Remembering also brings us closer to a n understanding that in fact every journey is a micro-pilgrimage; the journey to work, the shops, to a holiday destination all provide us with opportunities to find God as we travel the ordinary journeys of life.

“Pilgrimage can therefore be seen not simply as an esoteric practice to be undertaken by a few enthusiasts, but as something to be encouraged, to help people deepen their sense of God in the ordinary business of life.”

‘Pilgrimage’ by David Osborne, p24