Rogation, Realism, Faith

Rogation is the ancient season for beating the bounds and sowing in hope.

Celebrating in Little Kemble with the Book of Common Prayer this morning meant using traditional readings that have marked this day since the early middle ages.

In St John 16, Jesus encourages his disciples to ask for anything in his name, but points out to them that they don’t believe in him anything like as much as they think they do. St James speaks of the Bible as a mirror to reflect our motives, acts and intentions. Where the three are integrated, there is true religion; where they are not our most earnest concept of faith is moonshine. Both readings make it plain that true faith is not a higher form of self-deception, but a diagnostic weapon against self-deception. We deceive ourselves with any idea that prayer is therapy, religion a feelgood game, or faith a confirming mechanism and delivery vehicle for our own prejudices.

Wondering what faith has to do with prayer, I turned to Woodbine Willie.
In 1917 he had an embarrassing experience in a trench, helpless under heavy bombardment. On one side was a sergeant cursing and swearing with jokes, in the best traditions of the British Army. On the other was the Company Christian, pouring out pitiful requests to God to save his skin, in a way which everyone else found disconcerting. “I wish,” says Studdert-Kennedy,

“that the praying man would shut up. He isn’t fooling anyone but himself. The whole idea of prayer as a cheque drawn on the bank of heaven, the religion of the last resort, where what drives it is selfishness, is very much less than real prayer...
The first prayer I want my son to learn to say for me isn’t ‘God keep Daddy safe’ but ‘God make Daddy brave, and if he has hard things to do, make him strong to do them.’ Life and death don’t matter. Right and wrong do. Daddy dead is Daddy still, but Daddy dishonoured before God is something awful, too bad for words. Put in the bit about safety too, if you must, but afterwards, always afterwards, because it doesn’t matter nearly so much. Every man, woman and child should be taught to put first things first, in peace and in war, and that I believe is where we have failed.
We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort. Not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in a more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears. The comfort of the cushion not the comfort of the cross. Because we have failed in prayer to bear the cross, we have also failed to win the crown…”

This may seem a rather dated perspective from the age of chivalry, King and country. It is, but perhaps it holds up an interesting mirror for our use. In our age of anxiety everyone has something to feed a vague sense of thwarted entitlement. This begets designer victimhood and whining. There is another way. It’s called faith, and perhaps more of us should give it more of a go more of the time. Pray for faith and you might just get it. Pray for anything less and you are wasting your time.

Affirmative prayer, affirmative action?

On my cell group retreat and annual review, I came across this intriguing, slightly disturbing, playful poem, by an American poet I had not heard of before, Kaylin Haught:

God says Yes to Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Not the whole story, of course... but I wonder what we make of the thought. There is a principle of “all God’s promises being yes and amen” that is not always central to the way we feel about God. Perhaps the point is in the relational dialogue between the poet and God, not the absolute rightness or wrongness of nail polish etc.?

A question to ponder as we in the monsastery review the year and look forward, anyway?

Grief transformed, prayer answered

Someone recently bereaved was telling me about his first new year alone — bleak and unpromising, nothing doing in an empty house, he wandered slightly aimlessly into town. There on the streets, he met a beggar. “What are you doing here?” the beggar asked him. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what,” replied my friend. “You’re coming with me. We’re going tenpin bowling, then MacDonalds and New Year together.” They had a memorable evening. And next term, at school, the children sang in assembly love isn’t love unless you give it away. They’re right.

I was reminded of a sappy perhaps, but profoundly true sentiment about prayer from the (rather uneven) Evan Almighty, voiced by Morgan Freeman, who is fast cornering the market in playing the Voice of God:

The Learning from Lambeth

OK — now I'm back at work, what is clearer to me as a result of Lambeth?

1. The sheer scale of our communion in global terms. It was immensely moving to meet colleagues from around the world — Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Darfur — and learn directly about the human and gospel dimensions of their lives. Most moving was the experience of being in a huge congregation saying the Lords prayer together in over a hundred languages. Quoting a Tanzanian brother, God’s Word speaks to each of us in our own language as the people we are, where we are. I was often reminded of Max Warren’s saying “It takes a whole world to know Christ.”
   So? Get to know and prioritize time for the world Church
2. The experience of African led Bible studies in community was fantastic. Some of the more academic English felt it wasn’t quite their cup of tea. It was mine. I am ashamed at the comaratively modest amount of time I have spent down the years in teams and groups studying the scriptures personally together. Business always seemed more important. If only I had seen that corporate study of the scriptures was our business, I might have prioritised things rather differently!
   So? Direct, personal, corporate Bible study could be given a greater place in the engine room of our decision making processes.
3. Indaba is a considerable discipline that takes a while to master, but it’s worth it. We are so inculturated into parliamentary methods and tactics, with winners and losers, as the way to make decisions. Indaba is slower, and requires a higher order of listening skills. Imagine, say, the last General Synod, without all the locker room intrigue, hysterics and theatricals. I am still haunted by a Japanese colleague, who had needed continuous translation, thanking the group in broken English for “the beauty of being listened to.” It brings no glory to God that the same would be very improbable feedback from many of our church meetings.
   So? Be more aware about the negative effects of parliamentary processes on people, and work for more patient, open, mutual, emotionally inteligent ways of deciding things together.
4. Rowan’s big Lambeth strategy seemed to be about committing to personal and corporate holiness, and alowing our plans to grow out of that. I have no grand overarching command and control strategy for Bucks. Here’s my strategy: Grace through Faith — strive to become the kind of people God needs us to be, and he will show us, on the ground, what needs doing and, more importantly, how to do it. As we step out, with authenticity, in faith we grow; as we shrink back, our visions get bogged down in fear and trivial pursuits. Therefore, as well as looking outward, centering our team processes in Scripture and being rigorously self-critical of our methods, we will be richly rewarded by God as we prioritise faith over fear, realism over fantasy, personal and spiritual excellence over mediocrity.
   So? We need more Faith, more realism, more holiness!

L4/15-18 Bearing up, pressing on...

15. Pray for local health and social services
was a doddle, but I don't do as much of it as would be good. I've been to services in my life where pretty much all the prayers are about Us in Church, and Us in Church being better disciples; and I tend to think one way of Us in Church being better disciples would be to shut up about ourselves and our feelings and our progress, and pray about someone else for a change.

16. Arrange to visit someone else’s Church
One of the strange things about being a bishop is that I'm always in someone else’s Church (or chapel or even, sometimes synagogue or mosque). I have a formal role in the C of E churches I visit in Bucks, but in practice I find it’s far more fruitful practically to think of myself as a guest, not the boss. I also find I get more opportunities to worship with different faith groups of all kinds than was the case before. It means experiencing all conceivable types of worship, from radically unstructured to Vatican 1 high mass, from six people at 8 o’clock to a loud and lively thousand. Every expression, of course, has its highlights and lowlights, but I can honestly say I haven’t ever been anywhere without sensing spiritual value in what was going on. I realise what freshness and vitality there is around the place, and looking back I have to confess my own narrowness and parochialism down the years, and a kind of “here we go again” thing in my own mind. One of the perks of this job is to be a guest in churches where other people, operationally, call the shots. One of the great perks of baptism is to be able to go anywhere within one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. I wish I'd explored this dimension of discipleship more years ago.

17. Walk or cycle a route you would normally drive
Done a few walks up to Church and round the village, and we walked to get a new bulb for the reptiles the other day, but the fact is most of my driving is over many miles without a proper public transport equivalent.

18. Water some plants or a green space using the washing-up water
Job Done. Hope the little darlins like (trace elemnt) Spag Bol. Shows how much I know about plants, but Lucy (who knows a lot more) assures me they’ll be OK... Done the Pampas Grass out the back, which seems to like trace element Spag Bol, because it did a cute little rustle in the wind afterwards. Ahh. Bless.