The Dark Night Bears Fruit

We hear so much about how faith 'heals,' how it 'makes us strong' and takes away all our 'weakness.'  But a great part of the Christian life is in fact a painful yearning for God, who is with us if we would only see him.  "Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves;  I sought him, but I found him not;  I called him, but he gave no answer" (Song of Songs 3:1).

I want to compare some poems that I wrote a month or so apart during this period of seeming spiritual dryness.  None of them are much to speak about from a literature point of view, but they were my measly attempts to put my feelings into words, and I hope they show some sort of progression.  The first really expresses a lot of the feelings in my last post.

Being Before the Sacrament

A Witness

The cross on my neck has no meaning

It does not move or speak to me

Though I am waiting.

I hold it through force of habit

And feel nothing.

The mat underneath my face

Scratches.  I don’t care.

I worm my cheek into the rough,

Eyes down.

Cold seeps up my back, my feet.

This gets to me,

Not because it speaks to me on any particular plane

But because it has always annoyed me,

And it is irritation, rather than resolution,

That gets me off the mat.

Friday 8^th March 2013

Douglas kitchen after a difficult day

I have an icon of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9) above the desk where I say morning prayer.  Icons are written to draw you in, to compel you to prayer and an acknowledgment of the divine simply by being in their presence.  This happened this morning, and I just had to write some of the thoughts that crystallised down.

17:1-9

 

He leads up the mountain.

They follow: “Teacher.”

Life seems hard, but simple.

The know no other.

The top of the mountain.

They know, they see: “Christ.”

They are thrown down.

Why me?  This terrible gift?

Life was so much

Simpler.  Ignorance was

Bliss.

How much harder is reality?

Monday 15^th March 2013

One of the things that we don't often acknowledge as Christians is the fact that to a certain extent, ignorance is bliss.  If you are looking for easy answers and an easy life planned out for you, then Christ is not the one you are seeking.  

The prophet Isaiah wrote, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways... for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).  This man who had such an intense relationship with God had to acknowledge that he could never understand his Lord.  

Jesus said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).  I have grown up in a society in which personal autonomy, the absolute right to life choices and the absolute desire to be in full control as we make them is the norm.  We tell ourselves that if we are in control then we will be happy.  We have the power to take hold of our own lives and do what we want with ourselves.

Perhaps therefore, denying myself and taking up my cross means acknowledging - I mean REALLY acknowledging - that accepting the reality that Christ is in the world, that God is working in me and around me, and that I can never hope to understand His ways or His thoughts, means giving up that desire to control my relationship with Him.

"I sought him, but I found him not."  I'm not going to stop seeking Him, but I am going to try to trust a bit more that He is hurting just as much as I am through my not finding Him, and that His plans for me are good, even if it doesn't always feel like it.

"I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.  And I lay down my life for the sheep."  John 10:14-15

Hilfield: The Dark Night Rises

I haven't posted for a month.  It has been a hard month.  I don't think you need to completely understand things to write about them, but you do need to have at least some perspective and purchase on them, and up till now I don't think I have.

For quite a while I have felt as though I have been going through some sort of divorce from Hilfield.  Anyone who has moved on from a school, or job, or club, or sports team will probably recognise what I am about to describe:  a feeling of loneliness, of being outside and rejected; of being undervalued and then feeling that one has little value in oneself; then a sense of disillusionment, frustration and anger at individuals who seem either not to feel those things themselves or trigger those feelings in me.

Yup, it's been a long month, realising that I have been feeling those things for quite a while.

I think these things would all be quite beareable in themselves, for they are just a normal part of living and working with other people.  You either work out a way to live with them, or deal with them with those concerned.  But I can't deal with this in that way.  I need to go to the source.  And that is far more painful and disorientating than any of those quite basic emotions I described above.

The simple truth is that I can't feel God, because I don't feel I am being honest to Him in my life here.


That may seem quite a shocking thing for someone who is preparing to spend a lifetime in God's service to say, but that is the fact of the matter.  The more time I spend here, the more my prayers seem just to vanish into the ether, the more life with others seems to lose its sacramental quality, the more my living with myself seems to become without hope or purpose.

 

Caravaggio: The Denial of Peter (John 18:13-27)

How at peace does Peter look as he denies Jesus?

My logical response is to say, "Well, evidently this place isn't good for me.  I don't feel spiritually or socially well here and so I should go back to the places which feel more wholesome for me."  And there is a lot in that way of thinking.  But the problem with it comes in those last two words, "for me."

When I came to Hilfield, I very definitively came "for me," if not just to feel good about myself, at least to learn and pray, to seep myself in the things "I feel" that "I need" for "my life" with God.  Perhaps God is forcing me to question that.  He certainly isn't just giving me those things!

I find rhetoric about "the community" very difficult to swallow.  Perhaps it is because I am young and I naturally have more of a "me and the world" mindset, but I just can't inhabit the idea that I am here solely to serve and be served by "the community."  A part of me feels this is because I want to protect my developing sense of self, in which I am really rejoicing for the first time, from the great institutional ogre that seems to muscle in on it every day.  But actually I find it just as hard to think of my life here in terms of serving and being served by "the people I live with", rather than "the community," however much I love them.

There is a great temptation, to which I fall prey almost daily, to beat myself up for not being able to "get" community life in this sense.  "Why don't I get it when they do?"  "Am I stupid?"  "Am I bad?"  But I think that this temptation is so particularly alluring because it allows me to avoid the really difficult question: "What is God actually doing here in me?"

If I find it so unsatisfying to be here for "my" self, or be here for "my" community, or even be here for "my" friends, maybe it is about time I started asking why I am here for God, whom I can never call "mine."

Congdon: Ego Sum: Matt 14:24-27

'Take heart.  It is I.  Do not be afraid.'

Some Introductory Reading on the Issues in This Post:

On the meaning and purpose of that sense that God is not there: The Dark Night of the Soul - St John of the Cross

On the value of staying in a place or amongst a group of people: Abiding - Ben Quash

On what it means to be true to God's call: The Cost Of Discipleship - Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Chs.2-3

On responding to the love of God: In My Disc of Gold - William Congdon

On community and the purpose of religious community - Cave, Refectory, Road -  Ian Adams

 

Pics from the One Day of Spring

So, Spring came and then reverted back to Winter, but it was glorious for a day, so I took the excuse to stop doing work and go out with my phone for a bit to take some pictures.

The polytunnel looking greener with peasticks (the peas are in there somewhere), cabbages, kale and lettuces

The garden almost ready for sowing

The chickenhouse getting a good clean

Chickens unimpressed by volunteer humour

Lyndon using the weather to contemplate Edith and Clarissa

Every blessing from Hilfield.

In the Lord I'll be ever thankful

One of the things that has really struck me about manyof the other community members here is the way in which they reach out to people using poetry.  There is such a depth of knowledge of literature here that people are actually surprisingly willing to share.


A few months back we were using a common Taize chant which invites us to think about what it is to give thanks and rejoice:
 
In the Lord I'll be ever thankful,
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God.  Do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices. The Lord is near.



And so I had a crack at putting my own response into poetry.  I warn you, it is only a first draft, so I hope that where quality is lacking, prayerfulness comes across!

In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful

Thursday 3^rd January – the barn and the vegetable garden

The life of thanksgiving is the greatest

Part of the Christian vocation.  Truly

Being thankful is a skill and an art

And to do it ever the greatest gift.

It is different to rejoice in the Lord

For that is no sacrifice, but simply

Is the only possible reaction

Of the soul to God and his endless love.

Thankfulness is rather a lifting up

Of the soul itself and all around it,

Everything it sees and touches and tastes,

An ultimately worthless offering

In itself.  But the only offering

Worthy of the offering of Jesus

If it opens our eyes, and then our minds,

So that we see and create the kingdom

Of God all around us.  Through thankfulness

We are transformed and burn with the brightness

Of the incarnate Christ.  Our opened eyes

Awake the dormant Christ in the precious

Sacrament of this world.  This Eucharist

Of all creation breathes across the pool

Of our common baptism into the true

Thanksgiving.  God is with us.  Give him voice.

I hope that in my life here, some of the thankfulness I feel comes across in how I interact with the sacrament of this place and those who come here.

My Epiphany Moment... Involving Sheep

There is a wonderful moment in the Simpsons Movie in which Homer is forced into having an 'Epiphany' by the enviably-named "boob lady." She calls it, "Sudden realisation of great truth."

Anyway, we are now in the Church season of Epiphany.  Before Christmas became fashionable in the Victorian period, Epiphany was the big winter feast.  Christmas is about Christ's presence in the world, which is important, but Epiphany is the first time people (the magi and the shepherds who visit Jesus at Bethlehem) begin to realise just what the great truth of that presence means, which is far more important.  In epiphany we are called to reflect on what exactly it is about Christ that we perhaps need to 'realise' in a shocking way.

 

I had that great epiphany moment the other day.  It is a story that involves white sheep... and a big white field.  I think you can probably guess where this is going.

Lyndon was sent to move the sheep and I was asked to help him.  Now, finding sheep in a big snow-covered field is not easy.  Usually they run to you when you jangle a bucket of food, but on this morning... nothing.

We checked the other fields just in case they had skipped the fence.  Nothing.  No tyre tracks, but then again it had been snowing pretty heavily, so maybe rustlers' tracks would have been covered.  We were both beginning to panic, wondering what exactly we were going to say to the estate manager if the sheep were gone.  "Errrr, we couldn't find the sheep," didn't feel like it would cut the mustard.

After about fifteen minutes we agree to go in opposite directions around the fence, in case they are sheltering in a small bit of tree cover.  And lo and behold, we hear a bleat... followed by another.

"I have never been so glad to see a sheep," were Lyndon's words.  I had to agree.

But it really made me think.  I had taken the sheep for granted.  I assumed they would always be there and that when it came to the point at which the freezer was running low there would always be one to... err... restock it.  It took my feeling that the sheep had been taken away from me to realise just how valuable they were.

To quote a million anglican sermons, "God is a bit like this."  And He really is.  In our prayer lives, many Christians yearn to be nearer to God, to know Him a little better each time they pray, and like me they are generally disappointed with the lacklustre results they achieve.  It is what St John of the Cross calls 'spiritual avarice,' because we are greedy for God, and try to consume more of Him than God knows we are ready for.

Perhaps my search for the 'perfect' way to pray, the 'perfect' way to serve and the 'perfect' way to love God was just this God-greed.  Through my feeling that He isn't hearing my prayers 95% of the time I actually have to have the faith to trust that he always hears them.  How strong would my faith be if I always felt that God was there and took Him for granted.  Now, I give thanks to God for that wonderful 5% where prayer seems to work, and I thank God for the gift of the 95% in which I am staring into the empty snowy field, now trusting that the sheep are there.

Lord God, teach me to pray.

Teach me to pray humbly,

And if it is your will

Leave me in the seeming darkness

So that I may learn to trust

In the light that is always with me,

Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Amen

The Great Os - not Honey Nut Loops

One of the great joys of Advent is remembering that move from the Jewish faith to the new faith of Jesus, and remembering just how different and shocking the new faith seemed to Jews, even to the Jewish followers of Jesus.

From the 16th December, a series of antiphons are sung, called "The Great Os."  They are all cries for God to come into our lives, but are all different ways of looking at God, and develop as we get nearer to Christmas.

The first ones, O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring and O King of the Nations represent the older, Jewish, way of seeing God, referring to various attempts by Old Testament writers to make the enormity of God comprehensible to people.

The new Wisdom Window in the Chapel of St Catharine's College, Cambridge

'O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the most High,

And reachest from one end to another, mightily, and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.'

The seventh, O Emmanuel, represents a seismic shift in our understanding of God.  Emmanuel means 'God is with us.'  Suddenly in Christ God ceases to be a far off concept.  God has come down to our level.  For the first time, human beings touch God, we hug him and kiss him, share food and drink with him.  

We are so used to the idea of God in human form that we forget how shocking this idea would have been to people.  In Exodus, God warns the Israelites that his presence would kill them outright, and Moses' face shines so that he has to wear a veil just from speaking with God.  Our nativity pictures should not make us go "Aaaah" so much as "Wow!"

A nativity scene from the Epiphany Chapel in Winchester Cathedral.

Notice how serious the angels, Mary and Joseph look.  This isn't

a happy homely scene.  Mary's head is bowed in awe, and the king

on the right looks like his eyes are about to burst from their sockets.

"O Emmanuel, our King and Law-giver, the desire of all nations

and their salvation, come and save us, O Lord, our God."

The last antiphon rams this point home.  "O Virgin of Virgins, how shall this be? for neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after.  Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye after me?  The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery."  The mystery of the Incarnation is so mind-boggling that we simply can't process it, and will never understand it.

Hear ye people, even to the ends of the earth!  God is with us! Christ is born!

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, 

reaching from one end to the other, 

mightily and sweetly ordering all things: 

Come and teach us the way of prudence. 

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, 

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush 

and gave him the law on Sinai: 

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm. 

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; 

before you kings will shut their mouths, 

to you the nations will make their prayer: 

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer. 

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel; 

you open and no one can shut; 

you shut and no one can open: 

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, 

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Morning Star, 

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: 

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. 

O King of the nations, and their desire, 

the cornerstone making both one: 

Come and save the human race, 

which you fashioned from clay. 

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, 

the hope of the nations and their Saviour: 

Come and save us, O Lord our God. 

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? 

For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. 

Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? 

The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.

Banana and Walnut muffins for "O Wisdom"

 

 

Peace and Goodwill from Hilfield!

JB and the purpose of Advent

We had our community bible study on Thursday night, and although I was one of the people leading it this week, I was also cooking, and so was making a cheese sauce until a minute before we started.  Lesson one: always be prepared spiritually as well as practically for leading worship.  A few minutes of prayer (and possibly Psalm 115 as well) to offer what you are about to do up to God and to ask Him to work through you goes a million miles.

As it was, I didn't really know what to say.  And I am sure that everyone was a little bit narked with me by the end of it.  In any case, I had the real privilege of listening in on what everyone else was thinking.

The passage was Luke 3:7-18.  Fiery stuff, as John the Baptist interacts with a crowd who think that he is the messiah (Jesus has not yet begun his ministry).  The first thing I liked that was said was that we are like the crowd in that we demand immediate solutions from God.  They want something they can do now to gain salvation.  But John cannot satisfy them.  He is only the herald for the one who will bring salvation.  He knows they are not yet ready to hear Jesus' message and so beings to prepare the ground for the Good News which will shortly follow.

An icon of John the Baptist

Christ is in a green mandorla, showing that he is hidden from us as his 

ministry has not yet begun.  John is gesturing towards him, 

trying to get people to prepare themselves for Christ and to actively wait for him.

He warns them not to rest on their laurels.  Just because they are Jewish does not mean they will enter the kingdom of God.  Rather, they must change their attitude to the world and those around them.  Give your excess to those who have nothing; do not justify your behaviour by saying that everyone else behaves like that, but rather be prepared to meet God as an individual, in the terrifying nakedness of one who is truly known by God.

It is a message that requires remarkable courage to hear.  In Advent, Christians are called not to rest on their laurels, not to believe that just because they go to Church once in a while, or even all the time, they are ok with God.  We are called to re-evaluate our relationship with the world, our brothers and sisters, and our Father in heaven.  We are called to be prepared to stand naked before the God who knows us truly.  And we are called to remember that, actually, we are never standing anywhere else.