Eternal Echoes

Dear Church, (a letter of longing, an invitation to dance ...)

Dear Church,

I love you, indeed I am a part of you and have chosen to follow a call to be so, but I have to admit that there are times when I walk or drive away from our meetings and I simply want to weep. I see that we do many good things, but I weep for so often we miss the best, by refusal, by blindness or by misunderstanding, don't we know that the message we hold is a glorious Spirit fired, message of grace and love? Let me explain a little by telling you a part of my story;

I came to join you as a mixed up teenager who wanted to know God, and for years (yes literally years) I tried to fit in, to do and say the right things, to understand your practices and rituals, all the time believing that if I could only get them right then God my receive even me! It took a real crisis in my life to draw from me a heartbroken prayer and a realisation that I could not be the person I was trying to be, I would always get it wrong, make mistakes and trip over my own feet. It was in my moment of giving up and giving in that I discovered something amazing and freeing, life-giving and affirming, the amazing truth was that God had been wanting to love me, help me and support me and equip me and even carry me when necessary all along. 

The scale of that revelation was mind blowing for me, and I can remember days when laughter and joy would simply bubble up inside me for the sheer wonder of it all, and I could not understand why you hadn't shared this secret with me! I looked for people who had had a similar revelation, and found some, some within my local fellowship, and some in other places, and I sought them out and drank form the life giving streams of the Spirit whenever I could.

But, and it is a big but, everywhere I went I discovered rules to be followed and again and again I would try to live within those rules, and again and again I would find myself thinking that I was not good enough for God and would have to try harder, and when I did, the joy left me and I would find myself struggling. As I talk with you I find that we are often in that same place, striving and struggling to get it right, wanting to know God, and it saddens me to know that again and again we lay burdens upon one an-others backs.

Now before anyone gets cross or hurt please know that I don't say that lightly, I say it because I see it all of the time and I don't doubt that I too have been guilty of it. The truth is we have a tendency to get strange ideas about God into our heads, only yesterday I heard someone say that "if we truly lived as Jesus wanted us to then we would be a strange buttoned up, straight laced group of people that would confuse and repell others....."

Where on earth did that idea come from? How could anyone who has read the Gospels believe that "if we truly lived as Jesus wanted us to then we would be a strange buttoned up, straight laced group of people that would confuse and repel others....."

When I hear things like this I want to weep with frustration and anguish and anger, yes anger that we have told ourselves such lies, that we have loaded one another with so many burdens of how to and what to that we stumble around under the weight of them, and in the midst of all this confusion and stumbling we wonder amongst ourselves why we are not attracting new members! Then we feel bad and so we plan and scheme and work and strive and frankly we wear ourselves out, we take on new initiatives and struggle to keep them afloat....

It saddens me that we are like this so often, and I wonder if you'd pause with me for a few moments to listen to the words of Jesus, spoken on a day of frustration in his ministry (go and read the Chapter, and the Chapter's around it and you'll see what I mean);

"^16-19How can I account for this generation? The people have been like spoiled children whining to their parents, 'We wanted to skip rope, and you were always too tired; we wanted to talk, but you were always too busy.' John came fasting and they called him crazy. I came feasting and they called me a lush, a friend of the riffraff. Opinion polls don't count for much, do they? The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

The Unforced Rhythms of Grace

 ²⁰Next Jesus let fly on the cities where he had worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least, shrugging their shoulders and going their own way.

 ^21-24"Doom to you, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had seen half of the powerful miracles you have seen, they would have been on their knees in a minute. At Judgment Day they'll get off easy compared to you. And Capernaum! With all your peacock strutting, you are going to end up in the abyss. If the people of Sodom had had your chances, the city would still be around. At Judgment Day they'll get off easy compared to you."

 ^25-26Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: "Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You've concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that's the way you like to work."

 ²⁷Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. "The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I'm not keeping it to myself; I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.

 ^28-30"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

 Jesus wants us to live and move within his unforced rhythms of grace, yes there are boundaries and yes there are rights and wrongs, but by the  Holy Spirit he will lead us gently into them, he longs take our hands and dance with joy for us...

He longs for us to know the life giving freedom and order of Pentecost, and yes I truly did say order, for just as the Spirit brooded over the chaotic waters at the beginning of creation so she broods and breathes over the chaos that is her church today longing to bring us to a new birth. That is a powerful picture, for it is not brooding in the sense of being filled with morbid thoughts but rather the sense of the Spirit as a mother hen incubating her eggs or her new chicks, warming, nurturing and protecting them until they are able to run freely...

The Spirit longs to birth her new life in amongst and through us, bringing order out of our chaos, the chaos of our misunderstandings and our stumblings, just as she did on the day of Pentecost when the disciples were filled with the power and love of God and when the message of Jesus, his birth, death and resurrection suddenly took on form and meaning transforming their timidity and placing in Peter ; you remember Peter, the stumbling, lying, denying, terrified one; well yes placing in him the a firey eloquence that drew a crowd....

 So here is what I am trying to say through all of this, when I drove away weeping from a service on Sunday I saw you (us) as the crippled woman we find in today's lectionary reading;

"She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. "Woman, you're free!" He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God."

Jesus longs to lay his healing hand upon us, to set us free from our self imposed constraints and rules, he longs to give us the fresh gift of his Spirit to enable and comfort, to teach, equip and lead us, to set us free to stand tall, and to live in the light and glory and freedom of the God who does not berate us for our sins, but removes them from us as far as the east is from the west, freeing us to dance with him, to become all that he has called us to be. If we dare to do that "casting off all that hinders us" and daring to run free with him, entering into the glorious circle of love and allow ourselves to be embraced by the God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) who only wants the best for us, and has chosen to make himself known through us, if we dare to do that then our strivings will cease and we will learn to live freely, lightly, joyfully abandoned to his purposes day be day transformed more and more into his likeness overflowing with the generous generosity of God.

Quite simply dear Church, he wants to bless us that we might be a blessing to others....

Will you join me, as I join him in the dance? It is from that dance that we are set free to sing his harmonies of truth and justice, grace and peace, from there that we can invite others to join us to work for wholeness and healing as in and though him we learn the fullness of our calling and our being....

All pictures by Tim

Messy Church .... no not that one...

I have been reflecting on our Christmas Services, and if I have to use one word to describe them the word I would use is messy. Of course we didn't set out to be messy, but that is how they largely turned out. Lets start with the Carol Services on the 18th, these are usually among the highlight of my year, but for some reason this year the message weighed heavy on me, add that to a change of format for  and the fact that one of the Chapel is undergoing a refurbishment, while the other had a change of format for health and safety reasons (no more hanging candles over peoples heads), and the general feel was well, messy!

On to Christmas Eve, well I'm not sure what was going on, the lossof a very dear member half way through the week had obviously played its part, but the service itself was anything but smooth, it is quite possible that our visitors thought we were mad, but in reality they seemed to relax in our muddle!, the Christmas day dawned and it became apparent that the main service in one village had been advertised at two different times! Other than that things went along pretty well but it did take a while to draw everyone in! The last service was a typical family Christmas morning, parents who'd been up for a while and children fractious to get back to their presents. Some folk enjoying family, others joining together so they weren't lonely, oh yes, and the organist was late- she'd been visiting friends...

So much for smooth well run events...

So much for timing...

And yet in the carols and the prayers, in the scripture, the preaching and the breaking of bread God was with us, Immanuel....

And as I ponder the story afresh I remember that he was not delivered in a sanitised hospital, nor was he laid in an immaculate and well planned nursery. He came right into the mess, the muddle, the difficulty and the heartache of this world, the vulnerable for the vulnerable, the weak for the weak, and yet somehow in the mystery of God al heaven rejoiced for he was the one who came anointed to preach good news to the poor, to bring sight to the blind, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and to set the prisoners free...

And even in our mess he comes!

Resurrection, recovery, and transformation... ( thoughts on time, and life )

Several thoughts coming together here, and all centred on resurrection and recovery...

On Easter Sunday I preached on the transformational possibilities released through the resurrection, how the risen and transformed Christ reveals to us the possibility of resurrection and transformation in our own lives. I used the (often used) illustration of a butterfly, noting that it begins life as a caterpillar and has to go through the transformation process by entering into the chrysalis where everything is in flux. In fact everything becomes a messy goop, and it is out of the mess that the new creature emerges. That emergence comes with a struggle, and the butterfly gains its strength through the struggle to emerge, to "help" a butterfly to break free from it's chrysalis tomb by opening it so that struggle is not needed will result in a weak and deficient creature that will never reach its full potential and soar!

Continuing to think along these lines I begin to wonder if we often rush the mystery of Easter and all too readily plunge back into the ordinary life. How easily we move in just three days from O Sacred Head Sore Wounded to Thine be the Glory, and yet a careful reading of the gospels reveals to us the doubts and fears that the disciples experienced in the days following the resurrection. Many times Jesus was not recognised, and his appearance though it certainly evoked joy, sometimes brought about terror and questions. 

Luke 24 tells us:

"just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. “Peace be with you,” he said.  But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost!"

Matthew 28:

"When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted."

John 20:

"At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus."

These and other descriptions of those first encounters reveal fear, doubt, and questions, writing today Maggi Dawn says:

"Whatever the resurrection meant, exactly, it didn’t mean that everything was back to normal. It meant that hope had not died with him; it meant that all their categories of thought had to be adjusted around this new situation. But in practical terms? perhaps it meant that something very new and amazing was breaking out, but perhaps it meant that they were to go home and resume normal life.

What to do? and how to live? It wasn’t clear at all. One gospeller tells us that some of them went back to Galilee and their fishing business. Another says they waited in Jerusalem. Hanging about, or plodding through life’s daily events, the resurrection had certainly not changed their lives in an instant, like winning the lottery or something."

Their lives were not changed in an instant, the events of Jesus life now needed re-framing in an entirely new way, death had been defeated, something new had begun, and in some ways the church in all its diversity is still grappling with what all of this means. 

We live in such an instant world that all too often we miss the depths of mystery that the Easter Gospels reveal to us, we don't dwell with the disciples in their fears and doubts, we want to move on to rush to proclaim the good news before we have grasped what the good news is...

And the truth is that the disciples had to wait with and dwell in this messy place of flux until Pentecost...

...and dare I say beyond Pentecost...

I wonder if an appropriate picture for the church should be of the chrysalis. Could it be that in daring to choose to be in Christ that we enter the tomb ( the chrysalis) with him and this is where we still are in many real senses, we are not yet what we will be, but all of the ingredients, all of the potential is there. And yet because he is raised we are raised and are actively called to be his body on earth, to reveal and live his resurrection to the world...

No wonder we get confused! 

So where did the thoughts on depression come from and why are they in this blog post title..?

A while ago I blogged on Mike Yardy and depression, and was encouraged by not only his openness and honesty regarding his illness, but also by Hugh Morris, the English team coach who was reported as saying:

 "Yardy would be given the full support of everyone connected with the national team....... our priority now is to ensure that he returns home to his family and is able to spend time recovering with a strong support network around him"

Today Sussex head Coach Mark Robinson has been reported as saying:

"But it is just like anybody being injured. You have to give them time to heal properly and what you don’t want to do is rush them back so that they have a recurrence of the injury. It’s the same for Yards."

Time to heal, time to heal from depression, time to heal from shock and grief....

Time...

For Yardy, the time to heal is crucial, and so it was for the disciples, and dare I say so it is for the church today. We have just plunged ourselves headlong into an intense week, re-living the events of The Passion and Easter, if we have done so lightly then we may just skim along, but if we have been touched by the mystery, challenged afresh by the possibilities, awed by the depth of love, and wonder of resurrection power, then maybe just maybe we need time...

Time to take it in, time to heal, time to ponder and wonder, to dwell with our doubts and fears, to re-emerge stronger and closer to God somehow...

On receiving praise.. (a feminist perspective)

Well they have arrived, the reports on my work and ministry, the reports that I have been dreading! One of these reports is from the District Tutor, looking at my ability to reflect theologically, the other from my Superintendent Minister who has assesed my practice.

I didn't want to open the e-mails, but when I did I was both shocked and surprised; one described my accademic work and reflection as of a very high standard, while the other described me as a more than competent Presbyter. Now I am not saying this to blow my own trumpet, because to be quite honest my first reaction was not to breathe a sigh of relief and say that is OK then, it was actually more a reaction of panic; the response oh cr*p sprang to mind!

Why oh cr*p, well first because it means that I must press on, must continue in this process of becomming that I have been called to, and second because I find it difficult to receive praise. Yes I find it difficult to receive praise. I think it is a cultural thing, not only do we Brits root for the underdog, if the truth be known in many ways we prefer to be the underdog, and I suspect that because of that we fail to acheive our full potential. I also think that it is part and parcel of being a woman, generally we don't do praise well...

In some ways I guess that I look at these reports and know that I have many faults and flaws but I also know that these have not been overlooked but treated and received with grace. I have been given some advice and some ideas of things to work on but that has not diminished the good reports in any way, in fact in some ways it has added to them, so I am left with the question as to why I find it so hard to receive them, and can only come back to the problem of knowing and loving myself...

I know that I am loved, but struggle to love myself, and because of this it is hard to accept praise and oh so easy to live with my own paranoia. The truth is that my situation is not that unusual, women particularly find it difficult to accept praise; a few years ago I blogged on a paper from Valerie Saiving on The Human Situation, it took an anthropological view of the feminine situation- asking whether it is right to challenge women on the sin of pride- suggesting that the major feminine sins are sins of distraction and lack of focus- these stem from the acceptance and passivity of an expected role of nurturer and sustainer of a family unit...

Saiving has tried to awaken theologians to the fact that the situation of women, however similar it may appear on the surface of our contemporary world to the situation of men and however much it may be echoed in the life of individual men, is, at bottom, quite different - that the specifically feminine dillemma is, in fact, precisely the opposite of the masculine. Women are quite simply more likely to sin by denying their God given gifts and talents than they are to fall prey to the sin of pride.

I know for myself that I struggle with this; writing is a joy; well it is until somebody is going to assess it, at this point I enter into the procrastination zone, not because I am lazy, but because in some perverted way I fear my own abilities. Is this all rather strange, well quite possibly it is to the oposite sex, as for me I will continue to struggle with myself before God. I will try to not only live up to the praise but also to step into being the person it calls me to be, all the while acknowledging that I do so by the grace of the one who has called me. S/he knows me and S/he loves me, and that is enough...

NOT A GENERAL ELECTION POST!!!! What has happened to spirituality and experience????

I have spent nearly my whole day immersed in words again, reading the Scriptures, looking for hymns, formulating prayers, writing reports, thinking, taking notes.... the list goes on...

At the same time I am mulling over some recent conversations ( more words); talking to creative friends who are frustrated a resistance to creativity that is so much in evidence in our now very word based Christian traditions, listening to a Local Preacher talk of how it was his experience of God that kept him faithful during a difficult personal time....

...and yet time and again we shy away from talking of our experiences, relegating them to second or third place, unsure what to do with them. Time and again I talk to folk who dislike imagery because of the emotional response it evokes from them, or run from creative expression in worship declaring that it has no place there...

Even creative workshops and quiet days seem to be suffering a backlash of anti-spirituality/ experiential thinking. I am beginning to feel like the thirsty traveler who discovered a pool of water only to have folk come along and tell me it is bad to drink from it....

Suddenly it seems to me that word and tradition are re-asserting their prominence in some circles over experience and a rise in thinking and talking about spirituality...

Does anyone know why?

Or am I going mad quietly on my own????

Because I need both, don't get me wrong, I love words, and I love the Scriptures, and I believe that there are depths within our traditions that would be a terrible loss were we to shun them. But I also need creativity, I need to pray with more than words and I struggle many times to find God through listening to a 20 minute 3 point sermon....

I need to experience worship with others, to find God through art, or music or meditation, through planting a seed, or felting a stone, or meditating on an indoor  fountain....

As a Methodist the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is important to me, and experience is an essential part of it; it is about my personal and communal experience of Christ, an experience that demands that I am whole, body mind and spirit whole. My faith did not begin in my head, it began with an experience, an opening of my heart to accept that I was loved by God....

Without that experience I would have given up long ago, as would my Local Preacher friend....

How about you???

Celebrating seasons, rites of passage, the environment and Avatar (I am slow)

As I write this I am sitting in my study which overlooks our vegetable patch, so far this year, even with the help of the cats who we are training to know that the raised beds are not their personal playgrounds, everything has come up and is doing well. This morning I am preparing some fleeces as the forecast is for a possible ground frost for the next few days, I will protect the more tender plants with this, some are still under cloches so they will be OK.

Vegetable gardening teaches you to work with and eat with the seasons, things can be "forced on" but this is not a good idea for most crops. Patience and care is essential, most farmers would agree, especially those who have returned to the more traditional ways of raising both crops and livestock. It is a joy to see free range hens and pigs as I walk the countryside where only a few years ago they would have been enclosed in intensive farming sheds ( that some still are is a sadness, though conditions have improved dramatically).

Time and patience, a willingness to move and work in sympathy with the earth and the seasons is something that has been too long neglected not only by society as a whole but also by the church. So often we forget to move with the seasons, even those who are lectionary based may stop only for a quick acknowledgment of the seasons before moving on. Colours help (stoles, altar frontals etc) but fewer and fewer folk  know what they mean! Contrast that with the growing interest in neo-paganism, where the seasons are marked and celebrated with ritual and real celebration; today is Beltane,  dances will be held  and decorations will be hung, and stories will be told. And yet sadly more and more our seasons for celebration are comercialised and stripped of meaning. Spiritual hunger for connection is all around us, we need to speak out, to make more of our celebrations, to mark with energy and enthusiasm not only Christmas and Easter, but also Epiphany, Candlemass, Ascension, Pentecost, Harvest.... the list goes on.... I know there are some excellent ways in which all this is done, and that there are many places where it has never stopped, but many of us have become word bound and lack imagination!

Another neglected area in the church today is rights of passage, we celebrate baptisms, and weddings and we are forced to be aware of death through funerals, but do we celebrate other transitions? Do we celebrate when children move from childhood to adolesence and when they move from adolesence to adutlhood? Yes these transitions are hard to pinpoint, but how about a celebration as they move from Yr 6 (5th Grade) to High/ Junior High School, and how about again as they leave High School and head out to work or college? Perhaps these celebrations are gifts we could offer to the wider community in a celebratory way that means more than a strange man offering a Gideons Bible...

All of these things would offer both colour and depth to our tradition and to our story, through them our humanity will be enriched and nurutured...

So what may you ask got me thinking about all of this...well I watched Avatar last night on DVD, and there is so much more to be said, more about human greed and the environment, more about God in all creation...

What truly preplexes me is how we cannot be challenged by the story, and yet I recieved so many e-mails asking for a negative critique as if it were an evil story to be steered away from. I am sorry, but I beg to differ!

I will end here for now, more later perhaps!

On being Church and needing confidence...

I have taken to asking folk at Church Council "how they feel about being church?", it is interesting that each time they respond as if the word being were not in my question, and they start to tell me about Sunday mornings. One group are particularly community focused and do a lot of work in their local area, but they don't see that as being church, nor do they consider it a witness.

It leaves me wondering whether I am wrong in expecting them to own their identity as a part of the body of Christ and see that being Christian is integral to who they are, and it is not just about Sunday. More than anything I sense a need to encourage prayer, prayer for themselves and for their community, for what struck me most about the Gospel reading last Sunday was not the temptations and tests that Jesus underwent, but that he left the desert in the power of the Spirit.

As we go through lent, following Jesus journey to the cross we must also remember that we are people of the resurrection, and I fear that we all too often forget that. There are times when I really struggle to pray, times when I try to carry on in my own strength, and I am sure that the Holy Spirit weeps over us when we do. Scripture tells us that the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express, and Jesus tells us that he set his face towards Jerusalem precisely in order that the Spirit might come:

 ¹⁵"If you love me, you will obey what I command. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— ¹⁷the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. (John 14: 15-18)

My prayer as I continue to walk through Lent then is that I might learn afresh what it is to live and move in the power of the Holy Spirit, that my prayer life might be invigorated and that I might be changed, for I want to encourage others to see themselves as God sees them, to know what it is to be church beyond Sunday, and to know that God is with them.

As I live and work amongst folk in rural communities I am becoming more and more convinced that our main problem is not dwindling numbers but lack of confidence, somehow we don't believe that God is interested in us. Instead we believe that we are small and insignificant, and the world is no longer interested in the Gospel. The result is that begin to apologise for our existence rather than listen to Jesus words;

"On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you!" (John 14:19)

We need to re-discover the truth that God has not given up on his church yet, nor has he ceased to be interested in us, we need only to look beyond our shores to see that that is true, and that the church is alive and vibrant AND GROWING!

I sense that we need to begin to tell our personal stories of faith again, to encourage one another, and to pray together; Sunday morning is NOT enough, but all too often it is all we offer, and so we are starving our spirits and sapping our energies!

So I wonder, does anyone else share my experience with rural congregations?

How should we be addressing the loss in confidence in both God and who we are called to be?

I feel that I cannot constantly ask people to do more until their vision and confidence is restored, and so perhaps again I need to take a leaf out of Eugene Peterson's book, and determine to work upon my confidence in God in order that I can encourage others. He says:

I want to cultivate my relationship with God. I want all of my life to be intimate - sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously - with the God who made, directs and loves me. And I want to waken others to the nature and centrality of prayer. I want to be a person in the community to whom others can come without hesitation, without wondering if it is appropriate, to get direction in prayer and praying. I want to do the original work of being in deepening conversation with the God who reveals himself to me and addresses me by name. I don't want to dispense mimeographed hand-outs that describe God's business; I want to witness out of my own experience. I don't want to live as a parasite on the first hand spiritual life of others, but to be personally involved with all my senses, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.*

O Lord hear my prayer....

Come Holy Spirit...

* Eugene Peterson: The Contemplative Pastor

Living in the liminaltiy of exile; opportunities and promises

My last two posts were poems written following the death of a much loved and faithful church member. They reflect my feelings surrounding her death, and the way that I see the church responding and reacting to it. I did not really know this dear lady personally but have witnessed the pain and loss that others have expressed and shown. As I wrote it occurred to me that it was not merely the loss of this dear soul that was being mourned, but also the loss of the way that things were, and the dawning realisation that they will not be that way again.

Mourning is a liminal space,where we live between the realities of how things were and how things are, unsure which way to step for a while, afraid that if we move all will be lost. Taking a step over the threshold towards the future can be daunting and not a little frightening. For those who find themselves unexpectedly living in a strange land the sense of disorientation can be doubly hard.

I believe that today, maybe particularly in rural Britain, many churches find themselves in this liminal space, and that they are being woken to the reality of their situation by circumstances such as the death of a much loved member, or the closure of a building, or any number of other circumstances that highlight the vulnerability they feel.

This is not a new reality for the people of God, Biblical accounts of faith surviving times of exile remind us that God does not leave us, they also remind us that sometimes he calls and places us way beyond our comfort zones...

I work amongst a group of rural churches in North Yorkshire, I believe that we are beginning to open our eyes upon a new cultural landscape and are finding that we are truly in a place of exile. But there are opportunities here, opportunities to seek God in a new way, to own our vulnerability and to move on from there...

In a recent reflection and presentationfor my own churches entitled "Where do we go from here?" I used these two images;

For me they capture a sense of helplessness and confusion that are often experienced by folk looking for the way ahead in an uncertain landscape. But we are not lost for God is with us, and as we begin to lift our eyes from the confusion he will lead us forward, and will unravel the paths beneath our feet...

We need to journey to a new place, and although I know it has been used before I think this image of Grommit laying new track because he has come to the end of the line speaks vividly and powerfully into our situation today.

We need to learn to listen to the God who drives us into the wilderness so that we need to rediscover his strength, to yearn to be filled by the Holy Spirit afresh, to be strengthened and equipped for the journey ahead, for we might just find that he desires to lead us away from exile, and put within our hearts echoes and longings for home!

Community, body language and priesthood....

My friend Mike has an interesting post on Equality and Ordained Priesthood, sparked off by a question from another friend Helen. She asked:

"Thinking of Sally's post about standing with the people during the covenant, and the fact that you were standing behind the altar - how do you reconcile this 'equality for all' to the idea of an ordained priesthood?" Mikes response was mostly ontological in nature, he recognises himself as a sinner, but also recognises something particular about his calling.

My response to the ongoing conversation was that I too recognize that ordained ministry is a calling, and that I believe that I have been called out from, for and by the body of Christ for a particular role within it. I also believe that a part of my role is to encourage others in their callings, recognising and affirming every member ministry! This means ( and it is not difficult) remembering that I only have certain gifts, and there are some I will never have!

In my previous post I spoke of how I joined the congregation sitting amongst them as we said the Covenant Prayer together. For me this was an important stance to take, not because I do not value ordained ministry, but because I do, and because I also value the ministry and gifts of every other member. We say the covenant prayer together as an act of communal and individual commitment to God, in this my role is no different from anyone else's. Following that part of the service I moved to resume my role in presiding at the table for the communion.

This brings me to another part of the discussion between Mike and Helen, they have both referred to the table rather than the altar, not an issue for me, but as they are both Anglicans I am interested in why they do so. For me the table highlights the memorial aspect of the Lord's Supper whereas the altar brings in many more aspects such as sacrifice and raises questions about the ontology of priesthood some of which I am uncomfortable with. That said I am willing to hold all of this lightly because I find amongst the congregations I serve a mix of thinking. One group refer to the "shelf/ platform" at the back of the alcove as the altar and are confused when I want to preside from the table which has to be brought in. We will have a conversation about this, but one step at a time! I am not the first minister to ask for the table to be brought in, and am thankful for that! Another congregation are an LEP, a mix of Anglicans and Methodists who have learned to adapt and are not precious about their practices, here the table is placed to one side of the platform and the pulpit to the other. I personally like the balance of this better than the final Chapel where I have pastoral Charge whose table is literally a shelf tucked under  the enormous pulpit; our buildings have a body language of their own, and I believe that how we work with this is important.

I do not use large and intimidating pulpits when preaching to small congregations, I prefer to use a table that I can stand behind rather than a ledge or shelf which means that I have to face away from the congregation when I am presiding at the Lords Supper. I like the Congregational practice of eating and drinking together and do use this sometimes, all of these things for me are about the communal aspect of the gathered people of God. The way we worship together is important, and it should reflect how we relate to one another and to God.

There is a lot of critisism surrounding the churches focus on worship, and I would challenge the validity of that critisism for I believe that we come together to worship God and to be sent out into the world to serve him. We need to come together, to make our confession together, to raise our intercessions together and to recieve encouragement from God and from one another. We are one body with many parts, and those parts may go their seperate ways though out the week but they are still connected... but that is a whole other topic, and so I will end this post here, and hope that the discussion continues!

Seashore walk

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Originally uploaded by Sallys journey.

I mentioned in my last post that walking is good for me, so today Tim, Emma and I set off for Hornsea Beach in East Yorkshire where we spent 2 1/2 hours walking and then enjoyed Fish and Chips at Sullivans a well established family run restaurant.

The sun was shining as we walked, and the sound of the waves was music to my soul!

 

On the way home we stopped a few times to take photos, the landscape was stunning: