It is very early on Sunday morning, the street lights are still on as the morning sun slowly emerges. I am on the 6.37 train from Milton Keynes and there are a surprising number of people. My friend Esther is traveling from Brighton, with an even earlier start, her train wafting with the smell of weed and still drunk revellers on their way home after a Saturday night out. My train is more sedate with early morning workers and travellers.
It is exciting to be on the train again for the last trip of my sabbatical. I am traveling to Spain to walk the last section of the famous pilgrim path, the ‘Camino de Santiago’. There are many routes on this ancient pilgrim route, some winding along the coast, others coming up from Portugal, but the most famous starts in France in the Pyrenees and they all end at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compestela. Many years ago my dear friend Emily walked the whole path over five weeks one summer. Her stories from that pilgrimage always stayed with me, and while I knew I could not manage the five weeks, either physically or practically (too long from the family) I knew it was something I wanted to do during this special gift of sabbatical time.
So here I am on the train meeting another dear friend, Esther, and we will walk for just seven days, over 100 km. A small taste of the longer pilgrimage, but our own pilgrimage in our own way. Our backpacks have been packed and repacked trying to make them as light as possible. I have the essentials…. English teabags (with me my whole summer of travel!), Kindle, limited change of clothes and numerous plasters and painkillers for sore feet and bad back!
We have two days of travel, it is not so easy to start the Camino with ‘green’ travel, but the train journeys themselves feel like the beginning of our pilgrimage. Tonight we will be in Barcelona, arriving at 9.30pm and leaving again at 8.30am. Once again I will have the chance to read, reflect and watch the world go by. I have downloaded Richard Rohrs wonderful book on spirituality in the second half of life to ‘chew’ on as I journey. I have a good range of novels also to while away the journey and one of my closest friends to chat with, I could not feel more blessed.
The irony of attending a zoom ‘speed awareness’ course shortly after reading ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’, was not missed by me. Was God trying to hit me over the head with the ‘slow down’ message, I wondered? I listened to the course trainer explain the extremely limited time value in a few extra mph, weighed against the impact on stopping distance and remembered one of the suggested techniques for ‘slowing’ down in life generally was to slow down when we drive. Message heard, loud and clear, slow down, whether it is in my car or in my life generally.
Of course, a sabbatical is absolutely about slowing down, space to reflect and these months are without doubt a gift of time. I am aware, though, of how easy it is to simply replicate the pattern and pressures of ‘normal’ life into this time if I am not careful. My need to feel productive, to have something to ‘show’ for all this time I have been given was highlighted in my conversation with my sabbatical supervisor. I am working away on the story of CWW, but maybe it won’t be finished in some ‘perfect’ form by the time I finish my sabbatical? Maybe that’s OK?
I was asked to make a list of ‘What helps restore your soul?’ Not on the spot but as things occurred to me. This is maybe the key question for these months, and also for what I take from these months, going forward. “What helps restore your soul?” Is maybe the question we all need to reflect on, to stop and notice.
So far on my list I have:
Sitting outside in the morning listening to the bird.
Going for an early morning swim.
Visiting an art gallery (I was meeting my Mum in London for the theatre and rather than dash in just in time I went early and spent time in the wonderful, and free, National Gallery looking at the beautiful impressionist paintings)
Silent prayer
At the end of the speed awareness course, we were asked how we were going to make sure we implemented the actions we had spoken about. We each had to offer a concrete suggestion, I said a post-it that said ‘slow down’ for the dashboard of the car. On reflection I think a post-it that says ‘slow down’ on my desk, fridge, mirror, everywhere in the house, is what I need to remind me that slowing down needs to become a pattern of my life.
Yesterday in London I was 15 minutes early meeting my Mum… unheard of, I am always a few minutes late for everything. I had a drink, read my book and watched the world go by. Another moment that restored my soul.
The view of the tree tops from the Cafe at Rushmere Country Park, the perfect place to sit and write on a beautiful sunny day. To breathe and slow down….
We are on our way home from a wonderful week at Taize, speeding through the beautiful French countryside on the very comfortable TGV (so much more spacious, both for luggage and seats, than the Eurostar. I maybe should rename this blog ‘In praise of train travel’!) This was the last view in Taize as we waited for the bus to take us to the train station in Macon.
It has been a very special week, to be back in Taize with Dave and no children or responsibilities. This summer we are, for the first time, having extended times for just the two of us and it is really lovely. Because of the boys special needs it has come to us later in life than many of our friends with children. As well as being good for us we are also so pleased to see both boys managing little snippets of independence.
It has, though, made both of us a little nostalgic during our week here. As we gathered for the beautiful evening prayers yesterday I remembered the times when Hannah was little and we had put her in her pyjamas before the prayers and vainly tried to get her to sleep in the pushchair on the walk from Olinda (the family area in Taize, which is a 10 minute walk away in the next village). I have so many special memories of bringing the family to this wonderful place, I do also remember, though, what a juggle it was to find times of stillness and prayer for ourselves in the midst of being mindful of the children. This week, with our children grownup, and the boys making steps towards independence, we had time just for ourselves.
The Saturday evening prayer, as the candle light spread across the church from the Easter candle and we sang together of Jesus resurrection, was so beautiful. It felt hard to leave and I sat long after the prayer had finished letting the songs wash over me. Taize has punctuated my life since I first came in my 20s and I am sure it will continue to do so. It also shifts and changes but at the heart is the prayer and the life of community.
I may be quiet for a while on the blog as I have two weeks mostly back in Milton Keynes when I will be working on writing the story of Church Without Walls (which, once finally finished, towards the end of my sabbatical in October, will be posted here). On Sunday 17th September I head off again on the two day train journey to start my week of walking the Camino de Santiago. I will be travelling as light as possible and will only post short reflections using my phone as I go. What a rich time of blessings this sabbatical is proving to be!
Ever Friday evening there are prayers around the cross. This is an Eastern Orthodox tradition that the brothers at Taize have made their own. It is a way of praying that recognises that we are more than cerebral people and that we sometimes need to pray with our whole bodies. The large Taize cross is placed on the floor in the centre of the church and at the end of the evening prayer, after the Brothers have first prayed round the cross, people come and kneel at the cross, placing their forehead onto the wooden cross as a symbol, gesture, that we place all our burdens onto Jesus.
I have been coming to Taize for decades and for most of those decades I would simply sit and pray and watch others go forward. From my Protestant background this was such an alien thing to do that I never felt drawn to it. Then one year, when I brought a group of students from Keele University, a young woman spoke to me of how she was struggling to forgive and to let go of the hurt she had experienced when she had been raped and I suggested that maybe taking those feelings to the cross at the Friday prayer, and simply giving them to Jesus, would be helpful. I offered to accompany her, my way of sharing her burden. So for the first time I knelt in the group at the end of the evening prayer, slowly moving towards the cross. It probably took 45 minutes of painful kneeling and moving forward to reach the cross. Then we knelt together with our foreheads on the large wooden cross as she offered all that pain to Jesus.
A few years later when my niece Ciera killed herself, and I received the news while in Taize, I knew that on the Friday evening I needed to take the overwhelming pain I felt to the cross. I remember weeping the whole way and how, to have something physically to do with my grief was, in the midst of a terrible time, helpful. A year later I was in Taize again and this time accompanying to the cross one of our CWW community who had carried so much pain in her life and wanted so much to find a way for Jesus to carry it. I cried for her and with her. This year I simply sat and prayed, moved by the many people bringing so many different unspoken burdens to lay at the cross and remembering those I knew who were carrying so much.
After last night remembering Good Friday, Jesus death on the cross, tonight at the prayers we will celebrate Jesus resurrection. In Taize they remember that every Sunday is Easter and so towards the end of the prayer candles will be lit, the light spreading from the Easter candle that represents the risen Christ. For the light to spread everyone has to accept the light from others, one light passed to another, and that is also a symbol of the way in our Christian life that we have to accept gifts from each other.
Matthew 17:1-9 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Today’s text really helps us to understand solidarity, the solidarity of God with us. The text is a well known one and is connected to the ‘Feast of the Transfiguration’, one of the Church festivals that is very famous in the Eastern Church but far less celebrated in the Western Church. The Monastery at Cluny (the French town just down the road from Taize) tried, in the middle ages, to bring this feast to greater prominence in the Western Church. They saw the end of the world as a moment of transfiguration not devastation and the ‘Feast of the Transfiguration’ as a moment to celebrate that. In the monastery there was a focus on the understanding that everything that is human has love, and therefore there is a future. We need to make the connection between what we live here on earth and the future.
This text from the Bible is normally read in the Western Church during Lent, on the way to Easter, but it looks beyond Easter and also speaks about the future of the material world. The text speaks about the face of Jesus, about his clothes, all material things of this world, but in the reading they are filled with Gods light.
First, let us think about what it means in the context of reading it in Lent, on the way to Easter. The reading begins with the phrase ‘After six days’. What is the ‘after’ that is being referred to it? It is the moment when Jesus had spoken about his death & resurrection. In the bible numbers have significance and the number six looks back to the creation story in Genesis when the world is made in six days (this is of course a poetic not scientific account). So creation took six days and here we have Jesus announcing something which will be like the seventh day. The seventh day in the story of creation is a day of rest, it is the day when the meaning of creation becomes clearer. The seventh day is Sunday, the day of resurrection, so that is when we can understand creation better. The day of resurrection, Sunday, is when we realise we are not created to die, that is not the end of God’s purpose, instead we are made for an unending love/life. Sunday is the day that starts with the resurrection and has no end, yes our human life is finite, but there is more. We go to the tomb on Easter Sunday and there is no sunset, there is no end.
Back to the reading of Jesus transfiguration, six days after he announces his death and resurrection Jesus goes up the mountain and is transformed, is full of light. Six days before he has announced his decision to go to Jerusalem and then there is this light transforming his face. In the reading it say that Elijah and Moses were with him. For the Jewish people reading this Elijah would have symbolised all the prophets and Moses the rest of the Torah (Hebrew scriptures). So around Jesus at this moment of transfiguration are people representing all of the bible. We are therefore reminded that the whole of the bible starts to have its real meaning in Jesus death and resurrection.
Reading the bible has always been difficult, it is not a new phenomenon! Saint Augustine, who was born 354AD found the bible very difficult and is recorded as saying “How is this a spiritual book?” For a while he gave up on trying to read it then he met someone who helped him. Following that experience he then wanted to encourage others to read the bible, and to read it with an openness and with freedom. So he wrote a book to help people which has the very misleading title ‘Christian Doctrine’ but really is a book about how to read strange texts. Augustine knew from his own experience how difficult the bible could be and he tried to give pointers to help others. He believed that the bible, however complicated and hidden, is ultimately all about love. It is all about love, but that is not always easy to see, so we need help, and often that help comes from asking each other. It is like recieving a love letter in a foreign language. You know it is a love letter, you want to understand it, you have the enthusiasm, but you need to ask people to help you translate.
In the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus we have the heart of the bible. In Luke 4 there is the story of Jesus at the Synagogue where he takes out scroll of Isaiah and reads, like a good Jew, a wonderful text from Isaiah. But Jesus does not read to the end of the text in Isaiah because the end of the text says ‘the year of revenge for our God’. Jesus does not read it because it was there for certain time but not for the time he was reading. We can grow as readers of the bible and be aware of what was really confirmed by the death and resurrection of Christ and what was not.
As has been said before, Jesus made a clear choice, a decision to go towards Jerusalem, towards his death (and resurrection). In Luke’s Gospel it is very clear as from chapter nine onwards it is written as a walk towards Jerusalem. There is a line in Luke’s Gospel that says something like “Jesus hardened his face towards Jerusalem” meaning he walks towards Jerusalem with determination. There is in this reading about the transfiguration a connection between this decision to turn his face towards Jerusalem and the light at the transfiguration. Luke’s text says Elijah and Moses were talking with Jesus an that they were talking about his ‘exodus’, or more commonly translated ‘his departure’. Elijah and Moses reposenting the whole bible and the focus is on Jesus decision. The light on the face of Jesus is like the light on the face of one who has decided to love to the very end. Even in human terms we can see that on peoples faces. It is the radiance of love of determination and commitment.
Now some thoughts on another letter in the Bible, one that has no known author, but who ever they were they were a genius with deep insight. In the letter to the Hebrews the writer sees no contradiction between Jesus dying on the cross and his powerless, and at the same time his glorification. There is a a radiance that comes from Jesus solidarity with us and that does not stop at the resurrection.
In the passage below Jesus called us his brothers and sisters, we are part of his family. Jesus was not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, this is Jesus’ solidarity with us, and this is true of us how ever we are, the solidarity of Christ extends to every part of our lives. This light, this glory is associated with Christs solidarity with us. Glory, radiance is one with solidarity, it is part of it. There is an English phrase “I felt very humbled”. It means that you feel welcomed, acknowledged beyond what you had hoped for, and this is in a sense what this passage from Hebrews makes us feel, Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, family.
Hebrews 2: 11-13, Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.”
Psalm 22, which we often read at Easter, connects with this reading from Hebrews. It starts with someone alone and suffering, abandoned by everyone. Then there is a change in the middle of the Psalm; the man is set free and he wants everyone to share in this transformation, in the ‘good news’ and there is this line “I will tell your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” Psalm 22:22. This Psalm is clearly echoed in Hebrews where the early Christians have read this Psalm and seen it speaking about Christ, seen it announcing God’s deep being to us.
Hebrews begins quoting this Psalm and then ends with, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” And with the affirmation of trust in God “I will put my trust in him.” It is Christ who is giving us his trust in God. Someone who trusted in God to the very end and was not disappointed, that is what Jesus wants to share with us. Our trust is not just psychological, Christ is there in the middle of our assembly, we are relying on that because our faith is very weak but we rely on the faith of Christ.
“For those of us who are believers, trust in God can give us a hope that is more powerful than fear of the future. Not a naive trust but the conviction, rooted in our hearts, that God is at work in creation and calls us to be at work in our turn, by taking on our responsibility for ourselves…and the next generation.” Inner Life and Solidarity” Brother Alois
The evening air was warm, hinting at the heat to come today, as I walked back to our room after the evening prayer. Like many people I had stayed a while singing, listening, praying. Many young people will stay hours after the prayer has finished, the church a place of quiet peaceful prayer. As I listened to the sound of the grasshoppers and the laughter of teenagers I felt full to burst with the gift of life and how incredibly blessed I am with this time I am in. But I felt it more than just this gift of my sabbatical time, my life is such a gift beyond the joy and treasures of travels and space. The church community I have the huge privilege of leading, the deep friendships I have that are decades old, the diverse and wonderful family I belong to, both those beside me daily and spread far and wide. We sang in the evening prayer ‘Bless the Lord my soul, who leads me into life’ a Taize chant I sang here when I first visited 38 years ago and which continues to speak to my heart as God continues to lead me into life.
The text today is a great passage and well-known Matthew 16: 13-23 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
This text in the Gospels is a turning point, a key moment in the life of Jesus. He firsts asks “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” and then, more personally,asks the disciples “Who do you say that I am?”. Then the turning point which follows, as the Gospel says directly after, “from that time on”. From this moment on Jesus looks to Jerusalem, he looks to his death.
Earlier in the week we talked about how sometimes we read the bible as if we are looking for information, for interesting facts, but the Bible is so much more than information. Here Jesus asks a question. At this turning point in his life, when he knows his time is beginning to draw to the end, he asks a question. When we ask a question we are not filling people’s minds with information, we are opening up to to the other person. Despite nearing the end of his life Jesus does not try to fill peoples minds with information instead he asks a question. Of course if a question is real and not rhetorical then the persons answer is important, what the person says, the words they use, their understanding, their reflection is important. Some teachers say ‘repeat after me’, Jesus does not do this. To do so would not respect their dignity. When you ask people what they think it means you value them, their reply is important to you, and that is what Jesus does at this key moment, he asks a question and he values the reply.
What do the answers of the peoples replies have in common? The disciples say that the people suggested that Jesus might be John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah and other prophets. What these ‘prophets’ have in common is that their lives were not easy lives. When the people saw Jesus they saw someone who struggled, who had a hard time, and that was like the prophets of old. Sometimes we superficially think everything will go smoothly if God is with us, that we will have an easy time, but even for Jesus, the Son of God and it was tough, it was not easy, and the people saw that. In our lives we should not interpret hardship and struggle as God not being there. The struggle has a meaning, in some ways there can even sometimes be a joy in costly struggle. This is very counter cultural but there can be a joy from being involved with a struggle that is important. Even a mother getting up for a child in the night knows it’s important. Maybe we need to look at some of the struggles we are in and know that God needs people who will accept the struggles. It is a form of trust. There will be times when we do not feel up to it and it will be hard to find the strength. Of course it is about freely choosing and sometimes running away is not a bad thing, we are not forced. The life of Jesus was always about a free choice, he freely chose the way of the cross and we freely choose to follow him.
The second question is directed specifically at the disciples, “Who do you say tha I am?”. They have been with him months, many for years, and he wants their answer based on their time with him. A real answer. It is the same for us, we are, after a time, asked to articulate what faith means to us. Our answer, like Peters, will always be inadequate, but it will be real answer coming from our experience of following Jesus. Peters response is “You are everything I have hoped for” (or as written in the Gospel “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”). Peter is right and he is wrong (he does not know or understand what is going to happen). He both understands but doesn’t understand. In so many ways Peter is all of us, we understand a little and then we don’t, we grasp for a moment what faith is about, and then we forget.
One of the major misunderstandings in the Gospels is about power. You can see power both superficially or with great depth. Understanding what power means in the Gospels is hard and very difficult. The difference between superficial, human power, and deep real power. Our human experience can help us understand this deeper power. We know that superficial, human power is all about control, about a puppet master. To understand the deeper power of God we maybe should draw on the experience of parents and the way that it takes alot more real power to not control our children and let them make free choices. To accept not to control is a much greater power, and that is a bit like God.
God accepts our freedom and works with our freedom, God does not try to control us, and that is ultimately real power. If you want to understand how God is all powerful you have to look at the last supper when Jesus is with his disciples. Jesus takes what is there in humanity, there is hatred, there is a plan to kill him, to destroy him, and in response he says “here is my body, here is my blood”. He transformed the reality that is there by giving himself, he transforms what is there by loving more, that is how God is all powerful. God does not create the hatred in others but God takes that reality, and with love and forgiveness, creates something new. We may have thought what was in control was the hatred. But no, at a deeper level something else is happening.
The key misunderstanding in the Gospels is all about power. It helps us to understand, particularly Marks gospel more when we realise that. Throughout Marks Gospel Jesus constantly tells people to “say nothing”, to keep it a secret, so that there may not be a misunderstanding of power, no expectation that he would be a Messiah of ‘power’ in the superficial human way. So every time someone recognises Jesus as the Messiah they are told to ‘tell no one’. It is only when the Centurion sees Jesus dying on the cross and says “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:39) that there is no call to secrecy because this is the moment when there can be no misunderstanding of power. Being the Messiah is not about privilege, it is not about power in the human sense, it is choosing love and forgiveness and death on the cross.
Let us just reflect briefly on the verses about Peter and the keys to the Kingdom. Much debate over many centuries but bringing today a different reading of the text, one that Saint Augustine suggests. Christ gave the keys to all of us. Peter represents all of us and the keys are given to all of us. Augustine reflected on how we are to reach the full meaning of what Christ did for us, and his conclusion was that we reach the full meaning when there is a community of love. Forgiveness can be announced by a Priest, a Pastor, a Minister, but it is each of us in community who make forgiveness a reality. It becomes real when you are surrounded by people who make that love and forgiveness a reality. That is why the keys are given to all of us and why Christian community is so important.
There is a very famous book written in 1866 by Dostoevsky, a Russian writer, called ‘Crime and Punishment’. It can be read as crime novel, but it is written with a deeper intention and is really a deeply theological book. In many ways it is about resurrection, about a man who wanted to be alone and yet comes to life again. The main character, Raskolnikov, wanted to live purely from his rationality and that ultimately leads to madness. His rationality leads him to the conclusion that he should kill an old woman who has alot of money so that he will no longer be destitute. So he commits the crime. Once he has killed her he begins to lose his mind. There is a young woman in novel, Sonya, who has had a very hard life, and ends up as a prostitute to help support her family. She is really the figure of Christ in the novel. Raskolnikov is drawn to Sonya and feels he is able to speak to her about all that he has done, despite having never opened up to anyone before. There is this young woman, a figure of suffering and humility who somehow reaches him. In so many ways there is no greater power than humility. Sometimes people build a fortress around themselves and the only person who can come in, who can break through, is the humble person. Sonya suggest to Raskolnikov that he should go and tell what he has done in the public square. He does this and is arrested and sent to Siberia. At the end of the novel, in prison in Siberia, Raskolnikov realises that someone really loves him, the woman, the figure of Christ. There is a line in the book that begins like this: ‘It was evening and all the doors were locked’ , this line echos the line in John’s gospel when Jesus appears to his disciples for the first time after his death, it is a key resurrection appearance. In ‘Crime and Punishment’ this line begins a passage that speaks of the way Raskolnikov, for the first time, starts to see in his fellow prisoners something more than hatred. He starts to see friendship and love in the eyes of others.
For Dostoevsky that is what resurrection is (and for us too). When we are no longer prisoners of our fears, our fears of others, but it is also about community. That is what our communities can be, places where we can look at each other in ways that can bring healing. This makes forgiveness much more concrete than just ‘anouncing’ it, but also gives responsibility to all of us. It can be frightening to know that we have the power to lock people into their mistakes or the power to liberate. How we help create an atmosphere of life, that is the question for our Christian communities today.
“Perhaps this too will enable us to change our way of seeing the Church: could we consider it more and more as the great family of those who, in the steps of Christ, choose to love?” Inner Life & Solidarity Brother Alois
Prayers before breakfast is the way of life at Taize, and can seem quite challenging if you are here for the first time. There is, though, something very special about starting everyday with prayer, silence, song and communion before getting into the nitty gritty of breakfast queues. Admittedly I wouldn’t be so keen on prayers before a cup of tea so have always managed to find a way to have a morning cuppa (travel kettle, teabags and small UHT milk cartons fill my luggage!) The rhythm of prayer is, without doubt, at the heart of the life at Taize and I was very struck that my daughter Hannah, who has no interest in faith or church, said she would really like to come back to Taize particularly to go to the prayers. There is just something so beautiful about nearly 1,000 people (sometimes more in the height of summer), mostly young, sitting on the floor singing harmonised Taize chants and sharing in silent prayer.
Today’s reflection focused on one of the letters that is found in the New Testament but is far less often read. This is the passage that underpinned all that Brother Emile said today:
James 2:1-8 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” you are doing right.
The text is from the less well known letter to James. Some people think if this letter in the bible had been better known, and more often read, the face of Christianity would have been very different. Let is begin by reflecting on why the focus on the poor, that is found in this letter, is so important and why it was particularly important for the early Christians. We need to look to the book of the Acts of the Apostles and begin with a moment in Chapter 10 that is a critical turning point in Christian history. (It is interesting to note that some people think that maybe we are currently at another major turning point in our Christian history. Pope Francis was recently in conversation with fellow Jesuits where he spoke freely, and he commented that things have changed so much over the last few decades that we must be ready for a new culture, we are at a point of change. These moments of huge change are a reminder that Christianity is not prisoner of any culture.)
In Acts 10 we have the story of Peter and the Roman Centurion, Cornelius. The story begins with Peter on the roof top where he has a vision/dream of all sorts of animals, clean and unclean (in terms of Jewish food rules), being lowed in a sheet and God commands him to eat what is being offered. Peter says “no”, my religion says “no”. How often does our ‘religion’ come into conflict with what God is commanding us to do? Peter doesn’t understand what the dream means but then he has a visit from some people who invite him to come and meet an important man in the Roman army. Peter goes and as he is talking to this man realises God’s holy spirit has been given to this Roman soldier, Cornelius, and so Peter realises he must baptise him, which he does. Peter baptises Cornelius even though he has not become a Jew or followed Jewish ways. Peter has done what God has commanded him even though it has gone against his religion .
There follows 5 chapters in Acts that are mostly a discussion as the early church community grapple with the question of ‘What to do?’. In Chap 15 they agree, they are to continue announcing the gospel to people who were not Jewish, the Gentiles, and that they should ‘not trouble them’ with all the Jewish laws (Acts 15:19). In the letter to the Galatians we have another account of this debate and here there is a very important line where after some discussion with the leaders of the Early Church Paul is encouraged to carry on preaching to the Gentiles but they asked only one thing, not to forget the poor. “They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do” Galatians 2:10
What is the connection between announcing the gospel to the Gentiles and not forgetting the poor? It means that the Jews know that God does not forget the poor. Throughout the Old Testament there are constant reminders of God’s care of the poor and so if you are Jewish you know that, it is central to faith. You cannot doubt that God loves the poor if you are Jewish. But maybe, if you are a Gentile, a non-Jew from a different culture, you do not know that. Many cultures today do not see God as loving the poor. Our culture today does not know that. When we have a culture that sees the poor as losers then we have lost something. So the one key thing was “remember the poor”.
The letter to James is a strong reminder of the importance of not forgetting the poor. The letter has been often been misunderstood (which is maybe why it is less well known) particularly if we approach it with the works/faith discussion of the 16th century. Luther focused on faith as the most important thing, but there was another famous and influential Lutheran who lived 200 years ago in Denmark, Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard loved the letter to James and he believed that if you have faith it leads to action, it is like fruit growing on a tree. Kierkegaard insisted that Christianity is something we embody and live. For him you understand a text in the bible only when you start loving. It is a life of love that interprets the text, otherwise it is hollow. Kierkegaard is interested in giving us a taste of what this life of love could be, he wants to give us an intuition of it. It is like the difference between reading the bible for information or transformation. It can be a very gentle transformation because God wants an answer that comes from our freedom. God tries to create in us a taste, the possibility of what that life of love might be.
Love has a certain way of understanding reality. When we start to understand love we can feel so far from it and we can feel ashamed, the danger is that we then become discouraged. But the reality is that at that very moment we have started to understand love. There is a way of living that corresponds to love. The very famous passage about love that we find in 1 Corinthians 13, gives us a picture of the way of love as a community. This passage is not about romantic love (even if we read if a lot at weddings) Paul is talking about a way of living together in love as community.
Kierkegaard loved these passages about love and found a great joy in them. In the letter to Peter there is a passage that talks about the way love covers up ‘a multitude of sins’ (1 Peter 4:8). This is NOT about covering up evil or crimes, but about our daily life, and moving away from being obsessed with being perfect. Brother Roger once said: “Perfection is the ability to accept the imperfections of others”.
Let us now consider how we look at the focus on the poor and living lives of love in the context of the challenges in our society. Brother Emile shared a story from Taize (one that I remember experiencing when I visited Taize in February 2020). During 2019 there were many reports about ‘the jungle’ in Calais. It was the place many migrants went to in hope of reaching the UK. A huge camp grew, the jungle. It was (and is) a pretty desperate place. Brother Alois, the leader of the Taize community, wrote to French Government and said “We have some places in the winter in Taize and are happy to welcome migrants here”. A while later the Government filled a bus with migrants and dropped a bus full of refugees in Taize. They came from Sudan, Syria and many other places. They saw the village in winter, a cold and isolated place, and said we are not getting off the bus!! After a while a few got off to use the toilet and then more. A welcome of hot chocolate and twelve said they would stay. (I did wonder what happened to the others? I must ask tomorrow.)
Before the Taize community wrote offering to welcome the refugees the Brothers went to visit every household in each of the villages and asked if people had concerns. There were no objections. Taize could provide the housing and food but they wanted to have a family who would welcome each person for a meal every week or so in order to build relationships, people who would remember the person and know their story. They easily found local families. These 12 young men were quite ambitious. They wanted to find work, apartments, to begin to make their way. Taize approached local tradesmen who took some of them on. The local newspaper became interested and asked the tradesmen if they had any problems with the refugees. One of the tradesmen said “yes, they work too hard”. Then non church goers started knocking on Taizes door and said “we can help and teach English”.
“You can ask a question and depending on how you word the question you will get very different responses. You can ask a theoretical question ‘do you think our country should welcome more migrants?’ and most will say no. But you ask the more demanding question, ‘We have two Syrian girls who need somewhere for two months’, and many will offer”.
What we think is selfishness is not. We need to help people to see real people with their stories, not refugee or asylum seeker but a person, then it is no longer theoretical. Also people must be informed (it was important that the Brothers visited everyone in both villages before the people came). So often what we are dealing with is fear and we must address not dismiss those fears. One of the important things Christian communities can do is to enable people to hear the real stories. A Methodist US minister visiting Taize said: “My church came back to life the day we decided to welcome refugees”
More and more people speak of the problem of polarisation. If we use certain words people close up, sometimes we need to use different words, ways of describing and introducing. A Brother recently travelled to a country where refugees are not very welcome so he talked about what the community were doing in Taize but described the people without using the ‘trigger’ words. It is so important not to think the other is selfish if they don’t think how we do. To realise the fears they have and to find ways to work around those fears.
Our discussion group has a Spainish woman in her early thirties, a Korean woman who is visiting family in Switzerland, a young German couple expecting their first baby in October, a Polish couple who have lived in the UK for the last 10 years and a Ukrainian man who speaks no English, German or French who has tried to participate by using Google translate and the few common words of Russian that the Polish family and he possess. The international nature of Taize is one of the real joys, but I find these days it is tinged with sadness as I am constantly reminded of the impact of BREXIT, particularly on our young people.
We had breakfast with Brother Paolo this morning (who I first met 38 years ago on my very first visit to Taize – he a fairly young brother and I an even younger visitor). It was, of course, a delight to catch up (and to enjoy a breakfast that was more than the usual bread roll, chocolate stick and butter!) But he said how now if young people from the UK want to come and volunteer at Taize they need a visa. I have been feeling the pain of it as I have looked with Hannah for opportunities for her gap year and realised how limited they now are – no possibility of seasonal work in the rest of Europe because, why would an employer want to bother getting a VISA for someone if they have good candidates who don’t need them? With all the implications of BREXIT it is probably more important than ever that we find ways to connect with our brothers and sisters across mainland Europe and particularly find ways for our young people to have some of the opportunities that in the past we took for granted. I feel even more determined to bring some of young people to Taize.
So to today’s talk and theme. The passage was Matthew 6: 5-12, 31-34, and the theme was prayer. For many people coming to Taize, the most important part of their time here is the prayer that happens three times a day, But that prayer time also raises many questions about prayer, particularly the 10 minutes silence that is central to each of the prayer times. We can find ourselves wondering: What are others thinking about? What should I be thinking about?
Jesus’ thinks about prayer in a very interesting way. Firstly, it was important to him, we have many stories of Jesus waking up early to pray, or simply finding time to pray. So there is clearly something important going on in prayer even if we don’t understand it. In this passage there is the phrase that Jesus uses: ‘Your Father who sees in secret will reward you’ Matthew 6:6 This idea of God seeing in secret has been used quite often in the bible, we find it in the Old Testament but often more threatening. For instance, you have acted unjustly and thought you got away with it but God sees. But here Jesus uses it quite differently, there is no threat in this passage. This passage suggests that what God sees is the good things you are doing, there is no comment on anything else. God sees the wonderful things. We therefore don’t need other people’s positive affirmations because you have the affirmation from God.
Of course we are human and therefore we are not indifferent to others views, but if we make others views too important and then we lose our freedom. Instead, if we look to the affirmation that comes from God our freedom increases, because we no longer need to please everyone else. Clearly we are not to deliberately provoke people but we no longer have to look for approval. There was a famous saying from Pope John (whoever was Pope in the 1950s? Not 100% which one!) “Do what you think God asks of you and let the birds sing”. In otherwords focus on God and let the rest get on with it! There is, of course, something in the human heart that seeks others affirmation, and it is not wrong to do that, but sometimes we seek it in places that cannot fulfil that longing. God sees the good things in secret and through accepting God’s loving gaze we can grow in this freedom.
Pray means you accept to be under the loving gaze of God, that is the heart of prayer. It is about entering into a state, a way of being, as a non orphan, as a child of God. Prayer is when you know you are welcomed, when you realise you are not judged and that God wants to give you life.
There is an a line in the Lord’s Prayer and todays reading ‘give us today our daily bread’. What is the bread that Jesus is talking about? It is more than bread to feed our bodies (not less than). There is a bread that feeds our dignity as human beings, a bread that affirms life in you, that says it is good to be alive. We pray every day for the bread that gives us purpose and direction. A good spiritual exercise is to reflect at the end of the day on how God has given us daily bread, given us purpose and direction in that day. Maybe through a conversation, a beautiful sunset or something we have read, and we remind ourselves of how God has fed us and given purpose and meaning in the day.
Yesterday we reflected a bit on suspicion. In this context it is good to be suspicious of the negative voice in our head that says we are not good enough. That accusing voice is not the voice of God.
When we listen to the affirming voice prayer becomes more interesting, a source of joy. Sometimes we read the bible to find out what we should do through a sense of obligation and maybe duty, but scripture is more than that and it begins with a gift. We need to begin with what God is offering rather than what is God asking, that creates a different relationship with the bible (and with prayer).
To finish with a few thoughts on the end of the passage Matthew 6:33 where Jesus speaks of seeking the Kingdom. “Strive first for the Kingdom of God and is righteousness”. God’s righteousness is a difficult word, phrase, for us to understand and it does not mean exactly what we understand by it today. Justice or righteousness for Matthew is more than social justice, it is a way of being where you become a reflection of who God is. We know those people who when we meet them, afterwards we feel as if know more of who God is, in them we see God’s righteousness.
Brother Emile shared a story about the Taize European meeting held in Prague in the 1980s just after the fall of the Berlin wall. There were 80,000 people coming to the city for the meeting between Christmas and New Year and the churches were not strong and the Taize brothers were struggling to find accommodation for everyone who was arriving. There was a woman in Prague who was a friend of the Taize community. She had 10 children, her husband had been put in prison for a while for for translating Brother Rogers texts for the Christian community, she was a strong and remarkable woman. She offered to take in 50 people into her home for that meeting!! Just before the meeting her husband rang Brother Emile and he said, I have one thing to ask of you, Brother Emile assumed he was going to say “Please don’t ask any more of us! We are at capacity” but instead the husband said “Please can we invite all the Brothers from Taize to eat with us on the 1st Jan”. When we think God can offer no more, God offers more. The righteousness of God is someone who offers extraordinary generosity, an over flowing generosity.
In Matthew 5, Jesus says your righteousness must be greater than the scribes and Pharisees and he then gives examples of extraordinary generosity: turn the other cheek, give away your coat, walk the extra mile etc. It is important to realise that these are not commandments but examples. We do not always have to turn the other cheek, sometimes to do that is to be complicit with evil, sometimes we have to question and challenge the person who has hit us on the cheek. A generous righteousness calls us to discern which to do. What the three examples have in common is the call to do more than asked. There is something overflowing, above and beyond, that is found in all three and that is how we mirror God in the world.
But how? We are just human beings? How can we be people who offer extraordinary generosity? Who go above and beyond? In the beatitudes, at the beginning of Matthew 5, Jesus says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. This is really important, we haven’t reached it, but we stretch for it, we are hungry for it, and that is enough for something to begin. We don’t have to be afraid to be who we are, we may be a long way away but we can begin by hungering. Scripture starts with a gift, that is the good news that justice/righteousness is being given by God through Christ to us, and sometimes we don’t know where it will lead us.
This passage also, of course, touches on forgiveness and sometimes we think that it is suggesting that God’s forgiveness is conditional, but forgiveness is never conditional, it is simply that God’s forgiveness can only really take its place in our hearts as we forgive. As we forgive there becomes a place in us to accept God’s forgiveness that was always there. The wrong done to us is not the last word, there is more to the story, more chapters.
The phrase ‘don’t worry’ is hard for those of us who worry a lot but it is about the priority of seeking God’s justice/righteousness. If we have our priorities right that can help us not to worry. There is something about putting things in their right place. It is not that we get rid of worry by some act of will (that isn’t possible), but maybe we can learn a way of living with worry, that doesn’t take us away from God and others. In prayer, we can share our worries with God. Letting our worries become God’s worries.
Jesus is maybe more realistic than we think in passage. There is a recognition of human condition but he is also trying to help us prioritise.
I have been coming to Taize since my early twenties and it is always a place of peace and restoration for me. The rhythm of life that requires no watch, simply the bells that ring as we move from prayer to meals to times of sharing and discussion, creates such a restful pattern to the day. And this year, with no children or groups to be responsible for, I have spaces in between that can be filled simply with reading, walking and writing. The bible introduction for the ‘adults’ group (anyone over 30 is an ‘adult’ rather than ‘young person’ in Taize) is being given my Brother Emile, and as usual is brilliant. As I have typed detailed notes I thought I would simply share each day the content of the talk as both a record for myself and a gift for anyone who is reading.
The bible text for today was not an easy one, Deuteronomy 30: 11-20. The key expression that stands out is ‘choose life’, yet there is a problem in the language for us as it is presented as an order. As we read it there is a mixture of love and care but also threat in the passage. How do we read the bible for today and leave the threat behind? We need to understand that the bible was written for a different context, a different mentality. How do we contextualise the bible for today? It is important to realise that being faithful to what is said in the bible is to say it differently, to simply repeat what was said is not to be faithful. For many this is deeply challenging but we need to realise that a contextual understanding of the bible is not only ‘allowed’ but is in fact necessary.
This is something people have always known, the writers of the bible themselves often retell and contextualise earlier stories. A good example of this is the story that is first found in the book of Exodus where the Israelites have been freed from Egypt and are wandering in the desert and start complaining to Moses and to God about how hungry they are and God provides manna for them to eat (interestingly the word manna literally means ‘What is that?’, something that a visitor frequently says at meal times when presented with the food for that day!) This same story is then retold later by Deuteronomy but it is given more relevance and context for that time with the added, and significant phrase “one does not live by bread alone” Deut 8:3. Later again, Jesus also uses and reinterpretes the phrase as part of an important moment in his life. So the original story in Exodus is contextualised and retold for a new context, scripture commenting on scripture. This happens throughout the bible.
To contextualise the bible, to read it again for here and now, is something that has always happened and it is not about being liberal with the bible but being faithful to it. It means that the bible remains alive and you always find something new. What helps us find new things in the bible? Bringing our real lives, our genuine questions, bringing ourselves to the text. We are called to listen with creativity and we often struggle to do that alone. When we come together and truly listen to each other it means that we each bring new light and meaning and that can be when we learn the most. The problem when reading the bible together is not that we know too little it is what we think we know. We need to come with openness, ready to learn from each other and often those who ‘know’ the least have the most to teach. I was reminded of our Talking Point group at CWW where there are a range of people with varying levels of ‘knowledge’ of the bible and how we learn so much from listening to each other.
Jesus quotes Deut 8:3 “one does not live by bread alone” at very important point in life. It is at the moment when he has chosen how he is going to be a Messiah, God’s Son in the world. Jesus has been with his cousin John the Baptist, we don’t know how long he has been with him but there comes a moment when he chooses to be baptised. In Matthews gospel we have a clear account of the way John thinks that this is a mistake (Matthew 3:14 “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”). But Jesus decides this is how he is going to be in the world, he is not going to stand ‘over’ people looking down, he is going to get into the water with them. To be God’s Son is to serve and to love to the very end, to be with people, alongside them not above them.
When we make a powerful choices in our lives there are often temptations soon after, second thoughts. The same happens for Jesus, as soon as he makes the choice to be baptised, to be one with humanity, he is sent into the desert, the wilderness, and tempted. The temptations are powerful pictorial descriptions of an inner experience that Jesus goes through. He made a choice, we make choices, and then the temptation comes; why not choose something easier? It is at this moment that Jesus quotes Deuteronomy as he is tempted to turn rocks into bread, to use his power to make life easier, “one does not live by bread alone”. But the text Jesus quotes is a popular text, it is one every Jew would have known, it was not text from someone with privilege and education. So even the text Jesus quotes is consistent with the choice he made to be with people not ‘above’ them.
The key theme today for our group discussion is ‘trust’. As a Christian theme this is sometimes seen as a problem; is it a call to be naive? How is trust possible in this world? But trust is for people with very critical minds and not for the naive. We need to only consider what happens when fear takes over our lives, at what happens when suspicion become systematic? Of course it is sometimes right to be suspicious, but when it becomes systematic, the only way we are able to be, then we close ourselves to so many things. When fear dominates our lives then everything becomes a problem.
There was a philosopher who had a phrase “Masters of suspicion”. He suggested that we should be suspicious, but we also should be suspicious of those who are systematically suspicious! Brother Emile asked Brother Roger (the founder of Taize) towards the end of his life why trust was so importanat to him. He said that trust was the reality he wanted people to discover at Taize. When asked what trust meant to him, Brother Roger gave a very unusual reply: “Trust takes away alibi, your excuse.”
Brother Emile’s interpretation of that reply is that if we say the world or the church, or any institution, are too corrupt to do anything, too untrustworthy, that becomes the perfect excuse to be passive. What does trust say to such contexts? It does NOT say, if you try to change something you will succeed, you might fail, but maybe you will change something, how ever small. Trust says you must risk. It is an invitation to risk, and some people don’t like that and will find that hard.
When Jesus chose the apostles, his followers, he chose those who would take risks, because if you trust you might get hurt. And if you are hurt it is not you who is wrong because you trusted but the person who hurt you. Of course, if there is a reason to be suspicious then we need to be, but not if it is our first response. Trust needs to be our first way of living in the world. The Bible gives us possibilities of ways of living in the world, and trust is one of them. With trust we are all on the same level, learning does not come into it.
Finally a quote from Brother Alois, the current leader of Taize who wrote a paper called ‘Inner Life and Solidarity’ that is the basis of our reflections this week.
“In the present situation we can, in our turn, choose to trust. We are free to discern, at the heart of our world, a light that comes from elsewhere. Even when we are going through a hard time, even when God does not seem to answer our cry, that light already rises like the morning star in our hearts.”
It was a slow day with time to simply sit and talk, a rare gift with my siblings, both of whom, like me, have very full lives. It was a precious time that brought Dad nearer as the four for us sat remembering sailing with Dad, sharing stories of our lives today, comparing notes as to who had sorted their funeral plan out and who hadn’t (while Mum enjoying listening to her crazy children) and sometimes just quietly dozing (it was a 12 hour boat ride). I had forgotten that the Blackwater is the river that opens out to the sea just by the Othona Community and the ancient chapel of St Peter’s. It was with the chapel in view, that both Mum and Dad had loved so much in recent years, that we scattered Dad’s ashes into the sea… handfuls at a time that drifted into the shapes of the sea and were then followed by flowers that Pete had brought from their garden; Rosemary for remembrance and a wonderful assortment of other wild flowers that we invented reasons and connections with Dad as we threw them in. So now when I am at Othona I will look out from the chapel and remember a special day and my lovely Dad.
Today I am back on my travels and on the train to Taize, an amazing ecumenical monastery in France. Dave is coming with me for the week, which is so lovely as I have been (and will be) away so much. We realised that it is the first time we have ever come to Taize on our own. Over the years we have brought numerous students during my years as a Chaplain at Keele University, and in recent years we have brought families from the CWW community, and of course we have always had some of our children with us too. But this year we will have a time at Taize that is just for us, and that feels rather special.
As I watch the world go by on yet another train journey I thought I would try and reflect briefly on my brilliant day at the Greenbelt Festival on Saturday, probably the best day I have had there in many years. The combination of inspiring and challenging speakers and moving music was so special. I began the day at a panel discussion about the L’Arche community. This is a remarkable international community whereby people with learning disabilities live alongside, and in community with, those who do not have l learning disabilities. At the core, L’Arche hold in balance for key elements: service, community, spirituality and outreach.
It has been an inspiring model for many people but three years ago L’Arche, and their supporters around the world, were shocked to their core by a report, from the L’Arche community themselves, that revealed that the founder of L’Arche (who had died a few years earlier), Jean Vanier, had sexually abused six women over a period of 35 years. The panel discussion had two long terms members of the L’Arche community, one with learning disabilities and one without, plus the current UK leader of L’Arche, reflecting on the impact of these revelations and what can be learnt.
Jean Vanier was a charismatic leader, often called a ‘living saint’ and he wrote many brilliant books. Many, many years ago I remember attending a meeting that he led when I was studying in Oxford and I was so inspired (this was long before I had children with learning disabilities myself). Those who spoke reflected on the huge challenge of holding in tension someone who you have admired, and who has transformed so many people’s lives, alongside someone who had done such appalling things.
Richard, who had learning disabilities, spoke of the day he found out and how his first reaction was; “Fucking bastard”, followed shortly by, “We are not safe, I want to leave”. But very quickly Richard found himself speaking to other L’Arche members and saying that he would stay, as he began to realise how important it was that they stayed together and supported each other. None of those abused had learning disabilities (not that that excuses anything that happened) and Richard spoke of the way he, and others with disabilities, felt they had been used to ‘mask’ what Jean had done. The importance of truth telling came through so strongly in the discussion as everyone who was part of the L’Arche community, whatever level of disability they were living with, were told, as appropriately as possible, what had happened. Jean had lived and created a lie and it was crucial that lie was in no way continued.
Alongside truth telling was the importance of recognising that what Jean had created was good and that goodness was not destroyed by what he had done, and that the L’Arche communities, while inspired by Jean’s remarkable vision, were so much more than that, and would continue. L’Arche had suffered from being defined by their ‘creator’ and the shocking revelations about a man who had been, in many ways idolised, meant that L’Arche could no longer be defined by their ‘creation’ story.
For me there were two key lessons that arose out of a very open and vulnerable discussion. Firstly, we should never call anyone a ‘living saint’, we should never give people that adulation, and ultimately power. There are many amazing and charismatic people who have done wonderful things, but if we start to see them as somehow without failings and weaknesses then we stop calling them to account, we give them too much power. Each and everyone of us needs to be accountable to God, but often the best way for that to be expressed is to have a way of being accountable to each other and the more power we have, the more we are seen as ‘saintly’ the more important that is.
The second thing, which is as difficult, is that we need to find a way to hold in balance the mixed nature of all human beings. What Jean Vanier did was awful, Richard’s words sum him up very well “fucking bastard” BUT that does not mean that somehow Jean was wholly ‘evil’, that we have to throw away every book he wrote, dismiss every thing he did. L’Arche is something wonderful and beautiful and some of his books are powerful and helpful. Jean was neither a ‘living saint’ nor ‘the devil incarnate’, it is that very polarisation that enables such things to happen as we forget the mixed nature of each and every one of us.
After starting the day on such a difficult subject it was great to sit in the sunshine with Dave watching ‘The Spirituals’ perform. As you would expect from their name they were a Gospel Choir with a brilliant mix of old and modern, all with a theme of social justice and changing our world. As the crowd sang along to ‘Something inside so Strong’ I felt empowered by this great Greenbelt community.
In the afternoon, as I squeezed into another big marquee to escape the rain that had suddenly appeared, I listened to Cole Morton share stories from his new book ‘Everything is Extraordinary’. What can I say! Buy the book! It was a delightful hour of moving and funny stories of encounters in his life; from the time when he walked from Harrods in Knightsbridge to the Food Bank in Kensington and the people he had met along the way, to a conversation with his son after he lost his best friend suddenly. He spoke of the man earning over £150,000 a year who gave it all away (except £4,000), of talking with a Philipino woman who had been kept, literally, as a slave by the diplomats who had brought her to the UK as a domestic servant. How do we connect and listen to each others stories was the theme that kept coming through, and the need to see the extraordinary in each other.
Later I listen to an inspiring hour of conversation and discussion between David and Carrie Grant who have just published a book called ‘A Very Modern Family’ where they very openly speak about the huge challenges of bringing up their kids. Their familiy is a mixed family with adopted kids, and their own, ASD kids, those who are transgender, those with mental health issues and so on… it is a very modern family and resonated with so many people listening, myself included. There was so much that spoke to me in this hour and I can only put down a few snippets.
They began with the simple statement that ‘Your family is whoever shows up’. And that is not always what we expect but it is who they are and it is the family God has given us. They spoke about how having special needs kids hugely changes you and how often the things that worked before no longer work. But also how society has changed so much so that for so many children and young people they are living in a profoundly different world to the one their parents did and we need to re look at our strategies. What worked when we were children simply won’t work now, it is so different we need a whole new way to parent.
There was also a huge stress on the need to be alongside your child, to teach our children to be who they are and to have a confidence about that, to encourage them to believe in themselves. Carrie movingly shared about what it means to have a child who is suicidal, to look into their room in the morning in fear that they won’t be breathing but also how she could see their beauty even in the brokenness.
I loved the way she spoke about simply sitting on her child’s bed every day saying nothing. First for a minute, then minute and half, slowly a bit longer until after a week of just coming and sitting for a bit longer each day her child said “ Mum, I am really sad”. And rather than trying to make it better (which is what every parent wants to do) she simply echoed back what had been said “yes, I know you are sad”. We need to hold the space with them and find a way to sit with them in the dark times. Not an easy thing to do when as a parent you want to soothe, heal and kiss it better, but maybe learning to sit in the dark times with them is something many of us need to learn.
I bought the book, not something I often do but I have time to read this summer and I think this might be a book to lend to many in my CWW community who have adopted children, or have ASD children, or just children who are struggling with life.
I love the talks and the words at Greenbelt, Dave loves the music and had come specially to listen to Bruce Cockburn, who played both in the afternoon and evening. He was simply brilliant. Onto the stage he came with two walking sticks, 78 and now riddled with arthritis. Then he picked up the guitar and sang and it was so beautiful and so moving. His latest album, written in these later years, is gentler and more spiritual. He is, in many ways, a poet who writes music. In the evening we sat and listened to Bruce again as the sun went down and he played one of my favourite songs from his new album (well this year) called ‘O Sun, O Moon’ a song that speaks of the spirit everywhere. I cried as I thought of the ashes we would be scattering the next day and of the connecting presence of God’s spirit in our lives.
Manhattan or Dakar Makes no difference where you are It doesn’t matter what you think Or if you smoke or if you drink
You’re a thread upon the loom When the spirit walks in the room
You could be naked, you could be armed You could be charming, you could be charmed You could be open, you could be closed Be one of us or one of those
You’re a thread upon the loom When the spirit walks in the room
On the march or on the run It matters not, what you have done Nor what you’ll do, nor what you’ll say We play the role we’re made to play
We’re but threads upon the loom When the spirit walks in the room
It can appear at any hour When it comes, it comes in power You may not walk, you may not see But you’ll become what you can be
You’re a thread upon the loom When the spirit walks in the room
We’re but threads upon the loom When the spirit walks in the room
Time to stroke the cats, reacquaint myself with my children and how much washing up one family can produce in the day and briefly pause between my travels. It has been good to ‘potter’ this week, write more of the story of Church Without Walls, and just be at home and allow some ‘disgesting’ of the previous ten days amazing visits and travels.
And now I am about to be off again. Today I am spending a day with Dave at Greenbelt, a Christian Arts festival with an amazing array of speakers and music. For many people the bank holiday at Greenbelt is an annual pilgrimage where they reconnect with friends and are reinspired in their faith. Dave and I have not stayed at Greenbelt since the children were young and with it now only 45 minutes up the road near Kettering tend to just dip in for a day.
I have a list of all the people I want to hear, from a panel discussion on the L’Arche Community following the revelations regarding their leader, to music from Bruce Cockburn and a talk on adoption. It will be good, and if there are gems to share then I will try to.
Tomorrow will be a different sort of day. I will be leaving at 6am to pick up my sister and Mum and we will be meeting my brother in Maldon, a small town on the Essex Blackwater where we will be taking a 12 hour boat trip out into the channel and scattering my Dad’s ashes. Dad loved sailing, not the big fancy sort, but in his small mirror dingy that lived in the garage and would be towed to Maldon and other sailing spots along the blackwater in Essex. Mum was always a bit nervous, I loved it when I could go with him, and I remember him taking the boys out briefly when they were young. So sailing the blackwater together is perfect for this in moment in our goodbyes, and we will have a day to ‘pause’ and sit and chat, and there will be tears, and there will be laughter, and Dad would have loved it.
And on Monday Dave and I travel to France for a week in the Taize…..
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