Spiritual Formation

Journey to the Centre of the Soul: A handbook for explorers by Andrew Mayes helps us to reflect on the challenges of relating our spirituality to the world in which we lives. Mayes notes the challenges of a society often in turmoil and placing many demands on our time.  He comments: “we live in a fragmenting world. Even within ourselves, we find ourselves pulled apart, caught up in a multiplicity of tasks, with so little time… caught between the commitment to help build Christian community and the call to solitude; pulled between the ‘desert’ and the ‘city’; falling between ideals of holiness and the reality of our fragility.”

Mayes recognises our desire to make a difference and all that God makes possible.

“The idea of spiritual formation emphasises that in prayer God wants to heal our dividedness, restore our unity, renew our wholeness in Christ. We need to be on the lookout both for signs of fragmentation, inner conflict and tension, and for signs of integration, evidences of things coming together, like the interweaving of strands in a Celtic design.”

“Spiritual formation invites us to be attentive to the impact of our prayer on our lifestyle and our lifestyle’s impact on prayer. It encourages us to explore the links between the way we pray and the way we live—to make connections between our experience in prayer and what happens to us in the world.”

All this is not easy, but it can make a valuable difference.

“Our potential and vocation is to be ignited by the Spirit, engulfed with his fire, radiant and ablaze with the Spirit himself, the divine flame. We need to allow ourselves to be scorched, singed, caressed by such a flame. In what ways have you experienced the fire of the divine Spirit in your life? Has this been a comforting or disturbing experience?”

Changing Churches

I recently read “Better Change in Church: when wholehearted commitment counts” by Rod Street and Nick Cuthbert. Street and Cuthbert offer some interesting and challenging insights on the question of managing change within the church community. Change is one of those things that we all tend to say we want, but many are less certain of the direction when it starts happening. However, change does – inevitably – take place and we need to embrace that, at least when we get it right.

As Street and Cuthbert remind us: “Change is a positive experience when led by God, but not a painless one. Resistance is normal. It is feedback on what people feel they are losing as they change. Leaders need to expect and recognise this. High emotions are normal. Without them people would not be changing. They should not be taken personally if you are the leader. People respond emotionally regardless of whether they are experiencing ‘good’ or ‘bad’ changes.”

One of the important things for church leaders is to help people with change. “Leaders must be able to listen, have open-minded discussions, and remind everyone of the value of what is happening. We have to be able to empathise with people and acknowledge their issues without losing our temper or being worn down.”

Street and Cuthbert identify the question of motives as critical.  I agree. Easily and frequently we focus on what we are doing. That is, of course, important. However, we need to dig deeper and think about what it is that is driving us. “The ‘what’ attracts interest. Yet it is the ‘why’ that attracts passion. ‘What’ attracts consumers. ‘Why’ attracts disciples. ‘What’ creates attraction which is easily lost. ‘Why’ creates loyalty which is hard to lose.”

Change for change’s sake is rarely good and, even more rarely, goes well. Good change does require careful negotiation. It can mean that we need to challenge people, but we certainly also should listen to them. Getting the right changes is always going to be challenging, but we need to remember that it can have immense results. Street and Cuthbert again: “If we give people what they want, we will usually end up being ineffective but if we ask why, then we may end up being very creative. As Henry Ford said, ‘If I had given people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.’”

21st Century Lessons

I recently read Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” – a fascinating read. He explores various of the challenges of our time, but I was particularly struck by a couple of comments near the end of the book, one about humility and the other concerning suffering.

“Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously. And among all forms of humility, perhaps the most important is to have humility before God. Whenever they talk of God, humans all too often profess abject self-effacement, but then use the name of God to lord it over their brethren.”

“The most real thing in the world is suffering. When you are confronted by some great story, and you wish to know whether it is real or imaginary, one of the key questions to ask is whether the central hero of the story can suffer.”

Basically the book is a series of 21 essays on contemporary issues, and it certainly offers some interesting thinking around what gives meaning to life. I certainly go for the thought that we could do with more humility and also the importance of facing the questions posed by suffering.

Sleepwalking

I enjoyed reading Judy Hirst's A Kind of Sleepwalking, a gentle, yet provocative challenge against sleepwalking through life. She reminds us that bad stuff happens - "Suffering arrives, shattering and unravelling our world: jolting us awake. This is an awful, painful place, yet somehow we need to be able to recognise that it is at these moments when we can in fact move forward, but it is difficult because in pain we struggle to find the capacity to deal with what is happening."

With a mix of reflecting on life and Scripture, we are helped to think about what really matters - "We have limited control over the circumstances of our lives and that is the hard truth. What we do have, though, is the choice in every circumstance of suffering to shape our attitude to it; to hand it over to God or to withhold it from him. To trust him with it or to give up hope."

Poverty - harshly, for real

I have been reading Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari. It’s a challenging read. It is sub-titled ‘understanding the anger of Britain’s underclass.’ McGarvey tells the painful story of his own (west of) Scottish upbringing, coloured by poverty and all the challenges it attracts. He is realistic and fair. Yes, the system puts people where they are – and it does. But he also recognises the challenges to which folk could rise, but don’t.

“It’s a bit rich to pretend it’s only racists and xenophobes who are unfairly dehumanising sections of the population. I grew up calling Conservatives ‘scum’ and genuinely believing it, oblivious to the broad spectrum of Conservative opinion that exists. Others in my community claim ‘all cops are bastards’ – even the ones who run towards knife-wielding terrorists to protect the public. From a very young age, we are all inculcated into the mores of a tribe and adopt those values often without thought, later mistaking them for our own.  ….  Belief in the virtue of our hypocrisy is one of the few things we have in common in this increasingly divided society.”

McGarvey’s book is an uncomfortable read, but I think it is an important one. My own upbringing, also in the west of Scotland, was very different, but, given his circumstances, it probably wouldn’t have been. We do need to understand something of what causes what goes on.

And we do need to play our part in addressing the issues that poverty provokes. We are too good at not giving them due attention. “Poverty is not a game and it’s going nowhere any time soon. Poverty is here to stay and things will get worse before they improve. That’s the truth our leaders know but don’t have the guts to tell us.”

Reflecting on the Passion

I have been reading Samuel Wells’ Hanging by a Thread, a moving, challenging and apt reflection on the events of the Passion, in which Wells looks to remind us of the sheer starkness of the events of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. As he says quite bluntly, but accurately – the passion narrative is “horrifying reading”.

He points, among other things, to the fickleness of the crowd and the way in which they changed their tune in just five short days – “You can’t trust a crowd. You can’t place your faith in popularity. It blows with the wind.”

Wells readily admits that we are incapable of travelling through Holy Week without knowing that Easter Day is round the corner; but he stresses how different it was for the first disciples, and urges us to try and comprehend something of the despair and desolation.

Still, his title conveys a poignancy to which he keeps returning – that of our faith hanging by as thread. That is the wonder of the Gospel and allows us to experience that God is with us. “God didn’t just create us, didn’t just love us from afar, didn’t just work in history to rescue us and strengthen us and heal us. God’s real glory, God’s true nature, appears in the real, substantial, material, physical reality of Jesus among us, Jesus just like us, Jesus beside us. And beside us not just in joy and celebration, but beside in horror, in agony, in isolation, in abandonment.”

Start with your Feet

I have just re-read, after a very long gap, John Vincent’s Radical Jesus. In many ways it was just as I remembered it, a great read, really challenging us to think about how we relate to Jesus and how we engage in the task of following him.

“Jesus the radical walks my streets, creates my communities, freaks out my neighbours, judges my friends, calls my enemies, offends my fellow ministers, heals my sick neighbours, breaks into my world views, exposes it my betrayals, just as he does it in the Gospel story.”

I just feel that, if that is not how it is, it is how it ought to be!

I particularly like – because it challenges me – his chapter about Jesus as the ‘man of roots’. The roots he identifies are levelling, sonship and wilderness. Jesus makes things level. It is like that bit from Isaiah about the valleys being brought up and the mountains being brought down. Jesus makes everyone level. “Excesses are reduced, inadequacies are made good.” Then Jesus is identified as God’s Son at the moment of his baptism. We, too, are God’s children. Jesus also spent that time in the wilderness. Those moments are needed. We might want to avoid the wilderness, but we will miss out if that’s what we do.

Vincent’s emphasis is very much on discipleship, and meaningful discipleship at that. “Discipleship to Jesus provides ‘strait jackets’ whereby people could not do anything else but behave differently.” He sees discipleship as something to which we are surely compelled.

He offers a list of five things that will get us to a good place on the discipleship road.

First, we should start with our feet. Following is key.

Second, we should share meals. Parties are a big element in God’s Kingdom.

Third, we should leave some things behind. That can be challenging, but it’s important.

Fourth, we should have things in common. Community (and sharing) are important.

Fifth, we need to learn to share a common destiny. Our discipleship is about the way of the Cross.