To be a pilgrim

As the end of the Easter season fast approaches, Holy Week already feels quite a long time ago and writing about it perhaps a little out of place. But Student Cross was and is a sufficiently significant part of my year that I feel it merits some reflection.

Setting off on this year's pilgrimage I already felt utterly exhausted. I am aware this was probably not the best start to a week of long walks interspersed with considerable sleep deprivation: that's how you are supposed to feel at the end, right, not before even beginning? For brief moments, I even questioned the wisdom of adding yet another layer of tiredness to that which had already accumulated over the preceding weeks and months.

But only for fleeting moments. Because most of the time I knew that walking 120 miles across England, carrying a wooden cross, talking sense, talking nonsense, listening, singing, staying up too late, sleeping on hard church floors, eating, drinking, praying, belonging ... this was exactly what I wanted to be doing during Holy Week.

When it comes to encouraging others to join, Student Cross is a hard sell. We walk most of the day, carrying heavy wooden crosses. In between we stay up late and sleep on hard church floors. Showers are rare; blisters frequent. And yet it successfully encapsulates something of the community I crave and, I suspect, holds important lessons for the wider church.

We have chosen a challenge which no individual can complete alone, forcing us to become a mutually-interdependent community, united by what we do together, not by what we say, think or believe. We find strength in the willingness to push ourselves because we care enough for the rest of the group to do so, and in the knowledge that when we think we can’t continue, others are carrying us who affirm that we can. There is also a paradoxical importance in walking towards a shared destination while knowing that we are here for the pilgrimage, not the arrival.

The sun shone. There were warm and friendly welcomes waiting for us all along the way. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun. Anyone who shared the week with me, though, will know there were also some tough, emotional moments. There were a few tears (actually, quite a lot of tears). But that was OK. In fact, more than that, it served as a reminder of what I think this is all about.

This was the fourth time I had walked Northern Leg since first walking in 2004. At least some of those I walked with this year weren't present on any or all of the previous occasions. On one level, then, these are people I hardly know. And yet these are people I know well enough to cry with as well as laugh with. To share hopes and dreams and fears and frustrations with. To be silent with as well as to talk with. To be real with. To be me.

On Student Cross a combination of physical exertion and sleep deprivation quickly leaves everyone exhausted to the point where we do not have the energy to put on the masks we so carefully construct to protect our vulnerable true identities. We become a community that is too tired to pretend its emotions aren’t real, its faults can be hidden, its uglier sides concealed. We become a community that sees each other in our moments of weakness and vulnerability: and quickly discovers that we are able to love and be loved anyway.

This is, I believe, what we, as church, are called to. To walk towards a shared vision, not of belief but of action for which we are all equally responsible. To be mutually supportive communities where we depend on each other and dare to be vulnerable to one another. To be spaces where we can be who we really are and be loved regardless. This is where we discover glimpses of the Christ-like love we are called to offer to one another, in order to be able to offer it to the world around us.

But perhaps the church has become too easy, too comfortable, too safe. Because too often, in my experience, churches, like society, are places where we neither need to, nor dare to take off the masks behind which we hide. They are places where we continue to conceal our precious true identities from one another. Places where we present to God the ‘me’ we would like to be.

Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is, I acknowledge, a scary prospect. Society has taught us to hide our true selves from the fear of ridicule and rejection, to shy away from admissions of weakness or guilt. And I am not going to deny that vulnerability almost inevitably invites pain. I felt some of that during Holy Week. 

But I suspect that if we dared to be who we really are a little bit more, to acknowledge our vulnerability to one another; then yes, we will find pain, but that in its midst the love we would discover just might empower us to create something truly beautiful as the co-creators with God we are called to be. I felt some of that during Holy Week too.

This, perhaps, is the cross that allows the new life of resurrection. 

This, for me, is Easter.

A story of rising, a story of descending

Generally, I try to avoid posting two blog posts in as many days, but today is ascension day, so if I don't post this today I'll have to wait a whole year by which time I might have mislaid it / forgotten about it / decided it wasn't worth posting anyway ... all of which may be a good thing, I guess, but anyway, here it is!

Stations of Light

During Lent I published some pictures and words to accompany the Stations of the Cross. It seems the 'Stations of Light', or 'Stations of the Resurrection' are much less well known. It strikes me that often, as church, despite our words affirming we are people of the resurrection, we are much more comfortable with struggles and sadness than joy and celebration. We fast during Lent with much greater diligence than we feast during Easter. We often seem more at ease with the horrors of crucifixion, than the mystery of Easter morning. We find it easier to believe in incomprehensible suffering and hatred, than incomprehensible life and love.

Of course, it would be equally wrong to celebrate the explosion of Easter joy without acknowledging the place of challenge and suffering in our world and in our faith; but I can't help feeling that generally, we might not have got the balance quite right yet.

In the name of balance, then, I offer these "Stations of the Resurrection", for your reflection:

The First Station: Jesus is Raised from the Dead

A man

Who walked this dust of ours

Now raised from death

Earthquakes and stillness

Force the question

Where now is Holy Ground?

The Second Station: Finding the Empty Tomb

An empty place

Where hope once lay

And fear now seeps

Darkness and confusion

As we seek

Our longed for Holy Ground

The Third Station: Mary Magdalene meets the Risen Jesus

A soft-spoken name

The call to our deepest self

Which speaks

Identity and Love

And sends us out

across familiar Holy Ground

The Fourth Station: Meeting the disciples on the Road to Emmaus

A journey

To walk away

From what might have been

Wondering and lost

Was this audacious hope

Such fragile Holy Ground?

The Fifth Station: Jesus is made known in the breaking of Bread

A simple meal

An invitation to the other

To share this bread

Feasting and companionship

Offers a gift of recognition

In this now Holy Ground

The Sixth Station: Jesus appears to the Disciples in Jerusalem

An upper room

A once so familiar face

An unexpected guest

Uncertainty and excitement

This place, a reminder

Of another Holy Ground

The Seventh Station: Jesus gives his peace

A blessing

With hands outstretched

In inclusive love

Forgiveness and peace

Trusted to create for others

A way into Holy Ground

The Eighth Station: Jesus strengthens the faith of Thomas

A scarred hand

Holding memories of pain

Offered freely but not cheaply

My Lord and My God

Passed through agony

That this might be Holy Ground

The Ninth Station: Jesus appears by the sea of Tiberius

A boat by the shore

Comfort in the familiar

Knowing everything is new

What was and what will be

Sent out into the normality

Of our everyday Holy Ground

The Tenth Station: Jesus forgives Peter and commands him to feed his sheep

A friendship restored

An intimate moment shared

Forgiveness offered freely

Repentance and restoration

Still welcome

To tread this Holy Ground

The Eleventh Station: Jesus commissions the disciples on the mountainside

A mountainside

The place of meeting

Of shared visions of what might be

Promise and challenge

Sent out

To create this Holy Ground

The Twelfth Station: Jesus Ascends into Heaven

A cloud of glory

The promised time has come

To find a new way of being

Ending and beginning

Leave the mountainside

To find your own Holy Ground

The Thirteenth Station: The disciples wait in prayer

A silent waiting

In prayerful contemplation

With God and with each other

Expectancy and hope

Knowing

This is already Holy Ground

The Fourteenth Station: The day of Pentecost

A new beginning

A precious gift

The confidence of trusting

Wind and fire

Confirming

No limits to our Holy Ground

In the silence

We stand on holy ground

Be still and watch

But not for long

It is time

To step out

And walk on.

Holidaying close to home

One of the realities of the life we have currently chosen is a lot more of our time is geographically tied to this location. A commitment to morning and evening prayer five days a week means committing to being very much resent in the city centre most of the time. It was something we were very much aware of buying into when we moved here: knowing it would bring both real positives and genuine challenges. Another reality which I was perhaps less conscious of when we begun but has proved itself over the recent months is that the  home / work boundaries are much more blurred than they have been at other points in our lives. Both spaces and activities are harder to place in the "this is leisure" and "this is work" boxes. Again, this brings great positives, as we strive to live a life where every part we do is integrated into a whole, but it also has its challenges.


Setting aside time to step out of that completeness is perhaps proving to be an important part of being able to fully buy into it. Which is why, when looking at our hectic diaries a few months back we set aside one of our completely free weekends and promised ourselves we would just do something different. A generous gift offered with the strict instruction to "spend it on something for yourselves" provided an added impetus.

We conscientiously kept it free of other commitments, but, life being busy, the said weekend approached without us having given too much thought to it. By which point we had missed all the cheap train tickets, usually a deciding factor in any trip away, and we wondered if we should just give it a miss.

But then we had this crazy idea. Really, to have the kind of break we wanted, we weren't going to have to go very far at all. Our chief priorities were just to be somewhere different, away from the distractions of jobs lists and laptops; and ideally go somewhere with a bit of the greenery which the city centre doesn't really offer. It turned out our bus passes could take us to the edge of the West Midlands conurbation, where we could find both of those things with no travel costs at all.

And so it was that we went on holiday on the number 9 bus route. Which may not mean much to anyone else, but just to add a little bit of context: I have taken that bus more times than I can count. It is the route that takes us to my in-laws and, back in 2005, it was the bus I took to and from work every day. And yet, last Saturday morning, when I walked towards the bus stop to catch it, it genuinely felt different. It felt like we were going on holiday. I wonder whether we are the first people who have ever "gone on holiday" by getting a bus from Birmingham to Stourbridge?

Admittedly, the best weather of the year so far definitely helped. Add in a long walk along a very beautiful stretch of canal, another along a disused railway, a cheap hotel, a soak in the bath, a balti restaurant, a good book, a lie-in, a full cooked breakfast, a country house and park, an ice-cream ... and I can think of little more that I would have wanted from this "mini-break". I guess holidays are perhaps less about where we go, and more about managing to change our mindset into a different gear. A change of location definitely helps that process, but maybe the distances don't always need to be as far as we sometimes imagine.

Who'd have thought it? A "holiday" in the Black Country turned out to be exactly what I needed and I arrived home on Sunday afternoon feeling thoroughly refreshed and ready to throw myself back into my hectic life.

Buying happiness

One notable difference about living in the city centre compared to other places we have lived is that, instead of being surrounded by other people's homes, we are surrounded predominantly by retail units. Our nearest neighbours are mostly the temples to Britain's favourite religion, consumerism.

It is an interesting place to find myself because, as some of you may know, I don't really like shopping. I do it because I have to, but it is not something I would ever choose to do for pleasure. The footfall through Birmingham City Centre on a Saturday afternoon suggests that in this, I am somewhat unusual.

Supposedly, everyone else thinks shopping is just brilliant and exactly what they want to be doing with their day off. On the other hand, looking at the faces of those passing by, maybe I'm not so unusual after all, because for a past-time which seems to attract millions, it's surprisingly rare to see people with beaming smiles spread across their faces. Frustration, yes; anger, sometimes; dissatisfaction, predominantly. But joy? No. Not really. That is not what I see on a busy Saturday in Birmingham.

So what is it all about? Why do millions of people spend a lot of time and all their money doing something which brings at best fleeting moments of relief or even euphoria, but which leaves behind a deep-seated dissatisfaction with ourselves and the world around us? A deep dissatisfaction which, not knowing how to shift, we think might just go with the next trip to guess where? Yes, the same old shopping centre to buy that one more thing which will, this time perhaps, solve it.

We all know the cliché that you can't buy happiness, and probably the vast majority of people would nod their heads sagely and agree with its truth. So I don't really want this to be a blog post that just repeats that age old message.

But I do want it to reflect on how the advertisers message that this one more thing which will make you more beautiful, more successful, more loveable, more satisfied, more happy manages to pervade beneath our common sense and deepest values which tell us this is all a load of nonsense. I want it to reflect on how our society has built itself on a system which is dependent on the misery of the majority.

Because sadly, it seems that it is very much in the interest of the revolving door of consumer capitalism to keep us unhappy. Our economic model relies on our dissatisfaction, and on a few people profiting from everyone else being miserable. Our whole economic system of buying power and growth would crumble if we were suddenly all satisfied, or heaven forbid actually happy. Those profiting from the current system are not going to allow it to be shaken easily, and those in power are terrified of the void that would leave behind.

And so almost from the cradle we are surrounded by messages which tell us we should strive to be something better, or stronger, or more beautiful, or more busy, or more intelligent, or more ... than we already are. And because we can never be more of all those things, because we can never satisfy our own ideals, well, then we just have to keep buying more stuff to try and fill the gaps instead.

So it seems it shouldn't be so very difficult. All we have to do is be happy. To find joy in being exactly who we are right now, at this time, in this place. To be satisfied with the messiness of our own complicated life which is never going to be exactly like the next person's. To find spaces where we can love our own humanity.

The freedom we claim to cling to so dearly in our society is to be found in this. Freedom is not to be found in the buying power or the false choices of a privatised economy. The true freedom we are called to is a freedom to be who we truly are. The freedom to know we can't buy happiness. The freedom to find ways to be happy enough to realise the full truth of this.

On a Saturday afternoon in Birmingham, it is pretty obvious there is much work to be done before we live in a society which is really happy and truly free.

Resurrection Days

And this is Love

That great white light

Who dares

Exhale

A fragile breath

Which reaches out

Through time and space

And in this touch

A tiny spark

Of heartfelt joy

Disturbs 

The darkness

In darkest night

A dot of light

That’s scarcely seen

But hearts perceive

This moment comes

And flickering hope

Is born anew

In these

The resurrection days.

Gratitude

A friend of mine is currently trying (and maybe I should add, almost four months in, succeeding) to blog about something she is grateful for every single day for a year.

Realistically, I am not going to even attempt to do that. If I did, it would probably last for about three days. I know my limits.

There is definitely something in it though. Blogging every day: no chance. But being grateful every day, yes, maybe that is something I could do. Something I should do. Something I need to do.

It is very easy to be dragged down by the ills of the world: to look at all that is wrong and painful, and difficult, and dark, and unjust, and wonder what on earth it is all about. It is easy to imagine, surrounded as we are by so much hurt, that there is something very naive and just a little bit stupid about living in a spirit of joyfulness and gratitude.

And I'm certainly not saying I'm going to start being grateful for the bad stuff. Nor am I about to shut my eyes to it and pretend we all live in a rosy world where everything goes exactly as we would wish it, because do you know what, we don't.

But sometimes a shift in perspective reminds us that in spite of all that causes pain, our own and that of others, we still have a lot for which we can be grateful; and to celebrate those things is neither naive nor crass. The celebration of, and gratitude for, the riches of life need in no way detract from our concern for suffering and injustice. Perhaps, on the contrary, our ability to be grateful for what is good is what gives us the strength to not just be mired in all that is difficult, weighed down by the weight of all that is wrong, but to act as a force for change and for good.

It was one of the things that struck me most forcefully and most persistently when we were in the Philippines: the ability of people with, by our Western perspectives, so little, to be so grateful for all that they have and are. And if they can do it, then guess what, so can I.

Thank you.

The value of the collective

Just under a week ago, I fasted as part of the National Fast Day for End Hunger Fast campaign. It was not my only day of fasting this lent and today, once again, I am going hungry in solidarity with the thousands in Britain who aren't sure where their next nutritious meal might come from. As part of a commitment by the church here to establish a relay of people fasting throughout the season of lent I have been fasting every Thursday.

But last Friday was noticeably different. Although I went to bed feeling just as hungry, fasting last Friday was definitely easier than it has been on other days.

I am certain the reason for this was to be found in the collective nature of last Friday's National Fast Day. I knew that, up and down the country, thousands of others were sharing the same fast as I was, for the same reasons. I felt connected to something beyond my own personal act of commitment. I was not physically present with any of them. Most I will never meet. But in some way I do not claim to fully understand, it made a real difference.

It was a reminder of the importance of our collective experiences. A reminder of our deep human need to share our struggles, our joys, our desires, our doubts, our beliefs, our lives. A reminder of the need to seek out the real community which is able to both support us and challenge us, affirm us where we are and guide us to where we might be.

It was a reminder that our highly individualised, 'just worry about your own personal gain' 'individual freedom is the ultimate god' society is in a very unhealthy place leaving millions isolated, vulnerable, confused, and susceptible to mental illness. A reminder that alone, we risk not even knowing what we are seeking; let alone knowing where to find it.

It was a reminder that we can only be the "I" we really want to be in the midst of the "we" that surrounds us. A reminder, therefore, that if we spend less time worrying about the "I" and more energy building the "we"; we might just find that, in the process, the "I" becomes something beyond what we imagined to be possible.

Hungry

Today I am hungry. I am hungry by choice.

Around me, thousands have not made that choice. But they are hungry too. And probably not just today.

The statistics are, in one of the richest countries in the world, quite frankly, shameful. Half a million people visited foodbanks last year and all the indicators suggest the figures are continuing to rise. Over 5000 people were admitted to hospital last year suffering from malnutrition and 17% of British children live in poverty.

Since the beginning of Lent, and a bit before, I have been involved in the End Hunger Fast campaign. At its heart is a call to take seriously the faithful spiritual discipline of fasting; and to link it to a political campaign for change. To fast as a prayer, yes, but also to fast as an act of non-violent direct action against a system which has abandoned some of the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in society.

One of the things I have become acutely aware of through my involvement in this campaign, even more so than I was before, is just how insidious is the temptation to blame those at the bottom of the heap. In a society that has become obsessed with personal, individual gain: we are taught to assume that our personal gain is being hampered by whoever is standing on the next rung down of the ladder. The rhetoric from both our media and our government is designed to keep us believing that it is the poor, the sick, the foreigners who are keeping us trapped in poverty and debt.

Huge resources are poured into recouping the estimated £2 billion lost through benefit fraud (which includes the inadverted fraud of dealing with a complicated system). And of course making sure we know all about the small number of cases of deliberate abuse. Far more than the resources directed towards clawing back the estimated £32 billion lost through tax avoidance and evasion (the government's own figures - many campaigners would put the figure far higher)

It is very easy to demonise the poor: they are the least likely to have the resources or skills or opportunities to express a different version of their story. "It is all their own fault", "they could just work harder", "they're all playing the system anyway", "well they don't exactly look like they're hungry", "I managed to pull myself up by my bootstraps so they should too", "if you help it will just make them dependent"...

And why is this myth not robustly and routinely dispelled? Because while we are busy looking down at how much it costs to support those below us, we are not turning round and looking up. And because we are looking the wrong way we some how carry on believing, even though it doesn't make any sense, that we are oppressed by those from below. Oppression never works like that. We are never oppressed by the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.

Yet while it is easy to find those ready to quickly repeat half-truths to condemn those beneath them, the End Hunger Fast campaign has proved how challenging it is to build a mass movement of people willing to start turning their gaze and looking upwards instead. I fear for a society so downtrodden, that it cannot raise its eyes to see that poverty, injustice and inequality in one of the world's richest nations are not caused by those at the bottom, but by those clinging determinedly to their place at the top of the pile.

It is time to start looking up. Looking up at a system, not to idolise it, but to recognise its flaws and the oppression inherent within it. Looking up at those with power and influence and wealth, not with a desire to emulate what they are and have, but in order to challenge an injustice which doesn't not have to endure.

We need to end the scandal of hunger. But probably even more, we need to speak as prophets of justice to end the stranglehold which keeps our eyes turned to the dust, as messengers of hope to encourage those around us to start looking up, inspired and believing that we can change our world for the better. I hope this campaign is doing a little bit of both.

www.endhungerfast.co.uk

Walking the Way of the Cross

I guess it could be said that this blog post has been more than two years in the making. Certainly, the paintings of the Stations of the Cross date back to our time in Cebu. By the time they were finished it was well after Easter and didn't feel appropriate to publish them. The crosses too, come from the Philippines, being made from dried palms leaves from the courtyard outside our bedroom. Some of the words were also scribbled down at that point, somewhat incoherently; and I have returned to them periodically and scribbled some more, before finally turning them into the form in which they appear here as the basis for our Lenten Friday evening prayers this year.

The idea of walking or pilgrimage, and the image of holy ground are powerful ones for me, to which I have found myself returning at intervals. I offer them to others in the hope that they might mean something to you too.  

Inside the institution

I would suggest that one of our deepest human desires, or perhaps even needs, is to belong. We yearn to be part of something bigger than our own individual identity. Something deep inside calls us out towards one another. It is a response to this desire we are trying to live out in our current project of creating community here.

Of course, while our desire to belong can be beautiful and creative it can also be horribly destructive when we unite around what we are not, around being in because we're not one of the other who is out. Uniting around the common enemy is an ever-present danger which I am sure I could write about at length.

But today I want to reflect on other complexities and on one of the dilemmas that I think the need to belong throws up for me. I wonder whether it has resonance in the lives of others too.

I want to belong. I believe deeply that we are made for community and for relationship with one another. That is why we create groups, and organisations and institutions: I believe all of these are created out of a human need to create orders and systems through which we can be together. On the other hand, I defy any institution to correspond entirely with my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours.

What then do we do when we desperately desire to belong and to conform, but when the institutions to which we wish to belong seem to contradict our most deeply held values? How do we balance being true to the unity of our communities and maintaining the integrity of our decisions and expressed opinions? When is it right to remain silent for the sake of those we care about and when is it our duty to use our love as a platform for challenge? These are not questions to which I have easy answers. They remain live questions for me, and I share them as such.

The church, in its broadest sense, is a classic example: I believe deeply that as Christians we are called into relationship with one another: it is impossible to be a follower of Christ in isolation. I cannot be the Christian I want to be without the church; and yet how often do I despair at things said or done in the name of my faith which I disagree with to the depths of my very being?

As you may have guessed there are particular recent examples (well, they were recent when I started writing this anyway ...) which have inspired these reflections. Some are on a large scale, some much more intimate.... but my relationships with the institutions and communities concerned makes me question whether I should name them here, in what is, at least in theory, a very public forum. Yet if I don't, does this just sound like theoretical nonsense with no basis in a practical reality? On balance though, I think I'll risk sounding like I'm talking nonsense.

For the love of Taize

In a couple of weeks we welcome one of the brothers of the Taizé community to join us in an evening of prayer at the church here. In an attempt to explain to others here just why this small corner of Burgundy is so important to me, I wrote the following for the church magazine. I share it here too, just in case anyone reading this hasn't heard me wax lyrical about this subject often enough ...

Many of you already know that the Taizé community is dear to my heart and a place that has played a hugely significant role in my journey so far. I don’t know where I would be without it, but it’s fair to say, probably not here. 

I want to begin by clarifying that although Taizé is often primarily associated with a particular style of music, it is about a whole lot more than that. Taizé had been getting things right for quite a while before they invented the Taizé chant. It is not, either, just about a particular way of praying. Although I do think it boils down to the centrality of that prayer. There are no compromises on the importance of prayer. Even on busy summer Sundays when up to 4000 people might be leaving and the same number arriving, the information point closes during prayer. Even the vending machines switch off during prayers.

And while it is not just about a style of prayer; it is about an understanding of prayer that much of the church would do well to heed. Prayer is not about lots of words telling God what we think he should be doing. It’s about stopping, listening and allowing Him to take us places we’re not sure we want to go. It is about allowing the whisper of unconditional love to shout louder than all the surrounding noise. Taizé’s rediscovery of the importance of silence, and their ability to make it accessible to all is an important gift to the wider church, should they choose to accept it.

I don’t just go to Taizé for the prayer. I go too for the sense of community, the shared meals with people from all over the world, the perceptive insights in bible introductions, the belief in the possibility of a meaningful ecumenism, the possibility of deep sharing with people you have only just met, the sharing in the work that makes the community run smoothly, the simplicity of life where it doesn’t matter that  I can’t check my emails.

But it still all comes back to prayer. Everything else works because it flows out of that absolute commitment to being open to listening to God. It enables the trust which hands over much of the running of the place to those who arrived a couple of days earlier under the supervision of young people who arrived only a couple of weeks before. It enables the trust which encourages each individual to take the implications of the gospel seriously without trying to make it more palatable to our western sensitivities. It enables the trust that hands over a gospel that says you are loved regardless, knowing that implicit is the challenge to go and live a life radically altered by that experience.

Taize is a place where I have been allowed to experience the consolation of the gospel so palpably that I have perhaps dared to face the challenge of the gospel just a little bit more than I might have done otherwise. And I am very grateful.

A rollercoaster ride

Like all  good new year's resolutions, my intention to keep my blog more up to date this year lasted until precisely half way through January. It is certainly not for want of things to write about it. Life feels rich and full and exciting at the moment. Whether any of it is interesting to read about or not is probably for others to judge. Perhaps it is no bad thing that I don't put pen to paper, or type to screen, too often.

Perhaps it is no bad thing either that I am too busy living life to have time to write about it: although I am not so sure about that one. Being caught up in the act of living is of course important, but I hope that living life to the full and reflecting on life don't have to be mutually exclusive. Perhaps that is one reason why the ten minute silence built in to our prayers twice a day is so important, it is a safety valve in an increasingly hectic schedule.

I am aware, of course, that living life to the full doesn't just mean being incredibly busy all the time. I am sure the two aren't always compatible and that being incredibly busy can often be a barrier to fullness of life. I am a great believer in taking time to be, not to do. To experience not to rush past. And yet at the moment, I feel life is both full in the very-busy-all-the-time-sense, and in the full-as-in-fulfilled sense of John 10:10: "I have come that you may have life in all it's fullness"

It was reflecting on a particular 24 hours of what has been a regular roller-coaster of emotional tensions that inspired this blogpost, and confirmed my reflection that yes, life at the moment is full, not because of the busy-ness of a whole host of things to do and not enough time to do them in, but because of the capacity to really feel and really live each one of them, even when I don't really have the time.

Within the space of a few days this week, I have felt frustrated to the point of wanting to give up and try something new, as well as inspired to the point of knowing this is the right place to carry on. I have felt nervous, energised, angry, excited, disappointed, enthused ... and exhausted, yes, quite a lot of exhausted. But most of all I have felt alive. The life I have chosen feels like one of heightened emotions: one where the lows hit hard but every high makes it all seem worth it.

It doesn't always make life easy. But fullness of life never promised to be easy. So if you see me in tears do not feel sorry for me, and if you hear me laughing hysterically, do not assume I have totally lost it. No, this is exactly how I want to live my life.

A Spirit of Hospitality

 Of the values we committed to when starting out in our current adventure in community life, I think the 'spirit of hospitality' was, at least in my mind the one that was the most vague. I agreed it was important and I thought I knew why, but I don't think I had any idea what it might look like in practice.



"Hospitality is a core value of our community and a spirit of welcome is integral to our life together. Our community is not a closed group concerned only with itself and our own relationships with one another. Together, we look outwards. Our home will be a place where others are made welcome."

In one sense, I'm still not really sure what it looks like. Hospitality is not one of the parts of our routine that fits easily into a definition or a timetable. But it has turned out to be a hugely significant part of what we do. Sharing our table with lots of different people has proved both life-giving and tiring; and often both at the same time.

On Christmas eve, we welcomed into our home our one hundredth different visitor; and since then, we have continued to add to the rich tapestry of people who have walked through the door. Some, of course, have been friends we have known for a long time: being back in England and in a very central location has helped us be ideally placed for reconnecting with people we know well. But many others are witnesses to new connections and friendships which are beginning to grow out of what we are trying to do here. 

There has already been some evidence of the wisdom of the person who said to me in the summer, before all this began, that whatever else we did, we would find that, even without seeking it, we were committing to a "ministry of listening". I hope that, beyond providing a decent cup of tea and some (if I do say so myself) quite nice food, it is true that we are creating a safe space, a space where honesty can speak and someone is at least trying to really listen.

The lived community itself may still be very small and have space available for new members to join, but I am starting to realise that maybe there is a level of community which we are setting out to create here that is perhaps already beginning to thrive.

Those Epiphany Moments

I know, Epiphany has been and gone. If I was organised, I'd have had this ready to post on Monday: but I'm not and it wasn't. But hey, better late than never.

I think it is very easy for the feast of Epiphany to get forgotten or sidelined, remembered merely as the end of a period of celebration. It is marked by taking down the Christmas decorations and that "back to school" feeling: and for me this year it was indeed both of these things.

But while Epiphany does mark the end of Christmas: it also deserves both recognition and celebration as a festival in its own right. I think its message is an important one which I don't want to be reduced to putting the three kings in the stable for half a day before it gets packed away for another year. 

This year, reading the story of the visit of the Magi, I was particularly struck by the words "They returned to their country by another route" (Matthew 2:12) At first, the Magi sought the new king in the palace, in the place of power: but he was not to be found. Instead he was found in a very ordinary but, at least from the Magi's world view, very unexpected place. 

Once they came and saw, once they stopped and encountered, the God who was found in this place, their lives were transformed: they poured out their finest gifts and, more significantly, they could not go back the way they had come: the encounter was one of "conversion" of turning around and setting out on a different route.

When widening the reflection to the other key moments once associated with this festival (the birth, the baptism, the wedding at Cana) a common theme emerges: the encounter with God leaves no option to just carry on with life as it was before. 

Epiphany is the celebration of God's revelation (-phania = showing), but it seems that this is no one-sided feast day when we marvel at God making his identity visible to humanity: embedded within the stories is a very human response. Is the Epiphany in the showing, or is it actually in the looking? Or, as seems most likely to me, are they so intimately entwined that it would be impossible to separate God’s revelation from our human encounter with it?

It seems to me we have a huge freedom and a huge responsibility for our own epiphany moments: God's revelation becomes real, not in his actions but in the transformation by which we realise we must "return home by another route." It seems Epiphany may be a time to be challenged as well as to celebrate.

A Song of Prophets and Angels

It's Christmas time when angels sing

Their song of offered joy

And prophets call in desert lands

Their hope-filled words deploy

We like the blue-eyed Christmas angels

The ones with tinsel in their hair

But to stop and listen to their words of love

Is something we seldom dare

As profits out-shout the prophets

Whose oft-heard words have lost their power

And the angels’ song is strangely silent

At the magical midnight hour

We’ve closed our ears to hearing

The heart-felt justice cry

We seem to be somehow blinded

To a love no money can buy

But even in our world today

Angels still sing their song of love

And prophets old and new still share

Their messages from One above

So in amongst the Christmas sparkles

Take a moment, try to hear,

A whispered message meant just for you

Live in love, live in hope, have no fear

Merry Christmas!

I am here

And following on from my previous post... Having struggled to put into words my experience of St Chad's Sanctuary, I wondered if poetry might express it better. I don't know quite what I was aiming at, but it turned into this, written as if from the perspective of an asylum seeker. I'm not sure, really, I have the right to write from the perspective of an asylum seeker, after all, what would I know? But with that proviso, and in the hope that those who have lived the experience for real would understand that I hope to express something in support of them, not belittle their experiences, here it is:

I am here

And in amongst

The cold grey concrete

Is a silence

Which does not sing

Like the warm red dust

Of home

That offered hope

That does not seem

So golden as it looked

When glimpsed

From in amongst

My shattered

war torn

Home

And will you look

And try to see

That I am me

Just me

Or will you turn

Your eyes away

From all I’ve lived

And loved

And lost

And will you hear

My children’s tears

For what they hoped

And dared to dream

That cannot be

Or will you turn

Your ears away

From faltered words

That cannot say

All I have brought

And wish to

Give

And all is cold

So cold

As I stand hunched

Against harsh grey skies

And biting wind

And bitter, angry fear

Until

You hold

A hand out to me

And speak

A whispered breath

Of warmth

And welcome

When you notice

That I

Just I

I am here