Golden Slumbers. Golden Arches

There are two closing lines in the beautiful hymn, "Jerusalem the Golden", which read:
"O sweet and blessed country that eager hearts expect! Jesu, in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest". I was reminded of them by Richard Foster's recollection of Charles Spurgeon's entreaty on fasting and prayer: "never has Heaven's gate stood wider; never have our hearts been nearer the central Glory". Both quotes share the same sense of being within touching distance of an eternal home with God. And in Spurgeon's case, underlined by much of Foster's chapter on Fasting, it is that discipline that brought him closest to that spiritual epiphany.

Yet, if fasting is so efficacious, how is it "not for everyone"?  Foster points out that true fasting must be "God-initiated and God-ordained", yet some have not felt directed in this way, just as others have. A straw poll at home group this week showed a three-way spilt between those who had never fasted, had done so in the past or were fasting now. And the benefits were? "A slowing down. A receptiveness to God in a different, more relaxed, state" were reported.

All agreed that our eating habits, some would contend a modern obsession with food, can be a distraction from Godly living at best, at worst a different kind of idol. A golden calf from golden arches, you might say. Phones, tablets, media, work, relationships - also have the potential to distract us from God and yet all have the ability (well used) to help us in our Kingdom endeavours.

Imposing control over our will is the central but often seemingly impossible task of holy living. Overcoming sinful habits is one part of that. Another is those good and necessary things, like eating and drinking, the denial of which (for a time that is undamaging to our health) builds fortitude. In any case, God is needed as the reason, the power and the outcome.

In our weakened physical selves we might become - paradoxically - strengthened in our vision of God and his Kingdom - a golden Jerusalem, with milk and honey blest!

Godly Conversation

I met up with my new prayer partner this week; nothing new in the meeting; we've known each other for a number of years. But this time the topic was committing to pray to God, together, into the future. And yet something was troubling both of us.

"I get stuck in prayer when it becomes a rigid pattern...You know, you tell me A,B and C. I tell you X, Y and Z. And then we repeat as much as we can remember but in prayer-speak, as though God only arrived halfway through our meeting, and somehow needs to be brought up to speed".

"Yes, can't we just acknowledge the Holy Spirit with us and offer our conversation to God, as our prayer". The idea excited us, but we knew that we'd need to be attentive to God's leading...

And the conversation-prayer flowed wonderfully. There were questions, listening, clarifying, patience, responsiveness. We were acutely aware of God's presence with us in a unique and liberating way. We shared things that had heartened us, things that were frightening us, confessions and hopes. The Spirit guided at every turn, prompting bolder prayer and deeper listening ...

We learned a few things that helped our fledgling partnership in its new journey of Godly conversation,

• To open and close in prayer as something offered to God and received from God. 
• To be acutely aware of the Spirit alongside and within us, gave space for listening and were acutely aware of each other: our space, our feelings, our rights 
• To take turns, carefully. Both of us avoided monologue. 
• To know the subject area: things to be brought before and offered to God. Thanks, praise, sure, but also relationships, work and life. 
• To recall what the other had said, to be patient, and willing to offer in response.

A Godly conversation, then, which turned a 'chat' into meaningful prayer under the Holy Spirit. It could work individually, in pairs or even in a small group. That time gave us a taste of (what Foster refers to, in his chapter on prayer) 'the growing perpetual communion' - the ultimate aim of all prayer. 

Green Monsters and Yellow Submarines

In the past, when prayer has at times run dry, I have often turned to words that reassure me that I'm not alone:“We yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it….What holds us back…is the notion that we have to have everything ‘right’ in order to pray”.

I paraphrase a little, but so writes Richard Foster in the opening words of his book called simply ‘Prayer’. He gives in that book a more complete picture of prayer that squeezing a huge topic into a single chapter of Celebration of Discipline might allow.

I offer you one image from the opening chapter of ‘Prayer’ that has stayed with me: “In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture, a child of God cannot pray a bad prayer”.

Green monsters, blue days, yellow submarines and dark nights. No prayer is too simple when offered from the heart.

We are in good company. Nearly all of the prayers offered in the bible are simple prayers. Children of God opening their hearts and making their requests.

Jesus taught the disciples how to pray. There is more for us to learn too, but its only worth learning if it makes us more open before God. 

Visitors' Book

High Trenhouse, Settle, North Yorkshire

In the 1990s, periodically, I used to invite the Shell oil marketing team I led to a retreat house in the moors high above Settle in North Yorkshire. Time away together changed much, but not everything. We shared our lives, our stories and used to pray together in the evening. People’s experiences of that were different. There was nothing conventional about the retreats, which were different to the ‘conference’ norms of the time. We became a close and trusting team.

Happy recollections of those times were prompted by this week receiving photographs of the visitors’ book from some of those occasions. My and others’ names were written inside, bringing back memories of faces, people and moments. The photographs were sent by a friend now revisiting the retreat with his own business.

At the end of the 1990s, based then in Claygate, Louise and I joined a home group, which after an eight year intermission, I have just re-joined. Much has changed, but not everything. Last night, we meditated on Wednesday’s scripture passage from Chapter 1 of Celebration of Discipline; very beautiful words from Psalm 1:1-3:

“That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers” (v3).

People’s experiences of meditating on that scripture were very different. One described being taken and opened out in choreographed movement; another that calm and peace had replaced resentment. A reflection, too, on a multi-facetted God (whom I had seen as the ‘planter’ implied by the Psalm). For one, the experience was bumpier and needs new entry points. “To breathe the name” became the mantra of another.

Meditation had allowed us, in individual ways, to abide in God for a while. “Opening ourselves to be acted upon”, as Foster describes it (p37). .

We had signed the visitors’ book. Yet we are also free to take up a more permanent residence. A place where we “realise that God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good…..His inscrutable love seeks our awakening”*.

*from Thomas Merton’s “Seeds of Contemplation”

Take Heart

Saltburn by the Sea December 2015

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus heals the paralytic man, physically with the words “Get up!...”, and spiritually with the words “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven” (Mt 9:2)

It is those latter words of Jesus that I took into meditation last night*.

If someone was to say to us that “having a child is a huge commitment”, most of us (parents or not) would readily accept the principle. But when the commitment has been a personal one for us, when we have given love, time, money, ingenuity and bounced back from our failures to try again – then we have experienced all and more than the principle implies. We have known the difference between theory and practice.

“Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven”….

As I placed myself before God in meditation, those words were no longer merely theology. They became personal. I was moved to ask: “what..even the time that I….?”

And I heard again….”Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven”

“And the times that I have…?

“Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven”. I began to sense a rhythm. I can only describe it as like the motion of the waves crashing on a shore. With each ebb, each movement of repentance,  forgiveness and grace flowed inexorably back. Cancelling, cleansing, crossing out.

The intellectual knowledge of God was surpassed by something else, an experience of the grace of God.  Theory into practice.  Universal into personal.

“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me” (Psalm 42:7)

 *See Richard Foster’s quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on page 33 of ‘Celebration of Discipline’

Re-placing Ourselves

Nothing excites me more than the idea of being on the move.

Most of my travel these days is in the United Kingdom but motion usually brings me to novel, silent places and always prompts thought, prayer and reflection. There is something about being slightly ‘away from ourselves’ that can help us to see ourselves, others and God in a new light. Movement is seldom merely a physical displacement, but is often a place of spiritual opportunity. In his book, ‘The Art of Travel’, Alain de Botton writes: ‘Journeys are the midwives of thought’.

In Chapter 1 of CofD, Richard Foster stresses time and again that the spiritual disciplines we will explore together in the weeks to come are journeys, but not destinations. They merely ‘place us before God’. And being before God is a place of change and blessing which is the true destination of the follower-pilgrim.

Last Monday, together with a crowd at church, I listened to stories of change and providence: Jenny (now praying in partnership), Charlie (changed by small acts of service and listening) and Dorothy (connected into a new community from a place of isolation).

As I listened (and many of us wept), I was reminded that these places of change (and the dozen others that were spoken of) had not been arrived at accidentally. Each one was the result of a conscious, spiritual act of movement towards a place where God might work. Each bore the hallmark of spiritual discipline. Each was within the reach of young and old, too.

In moving to a new place closer to God, we ourselves are re-placed for the good.

Above and Below Ground

Outside St Pancras Church just off Euston Road, the church's resident street artist, Daniel McCarthy, has erected one of his murals on the corrugated iron barriers that surround the church's building work. It's a depiction of two realities. The ground above, green, flowered, with its hints of statues and lions (the iconography of the church outside which the mural hangs). And the place below with its underpinning arches, descending staircases which take mysterious interlocking paths – often apparently circular. It's the artist's interpretation of the paths and tunnels of the crypt which lies beneath the church, now housing its art gallery.

Between those two different realities, an intrepid figure takes the steps downwards. Surprisingly, the body seems to be taking light, almost weightless, steps.

On page 1 of his book, 'The Celebration of Discipline' (or the CofD as I will call it in this blog), Richard Foster invites us "to move beyond surface living into the depths" and "to explore the inner caverns of the spiritual realm".

On the opposite side of the Euston Road, the British Library houses a museum of the Library's Treasures. Currently on display are original manuscripts by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Mozart, Bach and Chopin. Alongside them, on the back of a child's birthday card are the lyrics to a Hard Day's Night, scribbled out by John Lennon. Together, they are some of the most stunning iconography of this and previous ages in life 'above ground'.

It seems to me that Richard Foster's invitation implies that exploration of the inner life will lead us to more, but rather different treasures. Not just the things we can see, but the treasures of God. Our exploration isn't seeking more of ourselves or the world, but more of God.

The paths that I hope we'll take together as a church may resemble the artist's depiction, twist and turn. There will be dead ends for me/us, and places that draw in light. But as we take first steps deeper, we can do so with expectation and excitement.