way out west

Book Launch: Ancient Faith Future Mission: New Monasticism as Fresh Expressions of Church

The combination of Fresh Expressions of Church and the explosion of interest in monastic spirituality is resulting in the emergence of new monastic communities inspired by historic patterns of religious life, but reframed for the contemporary world.  In this book, leaders of traditional religious communities and emerging 'new monastic' communities tell their stories and reflect on how an ancient expression of being church is inspiring and shaping a very new one.

Thursday 3rd Feb.  18:00 - 21:00 

Location: Church House, 90 Deansgate, Manchester.

Free Tickets: http://newmonasticism1.eventbrite.com/

Panel for the Manchester Book Launch

(Chair) Ben Edson, Diocesan Fresh Expressions Missioner & Associate Missioner of the National Fresh Expressions Team

Ray Simpson, Aidan and Hilda Community Lindisfarne

Philip Roderick, Spirituality Advisor to the Bishop of Sheffield and Leader for Contemplative Fire Community

Mark Berry, Safe Space Community Telford

Ian Mobsby, Moot Community London

 

St Francis Day

A Prayer for Gratitude from St. Francis of Assisi

Most High, all powerful, good Lord,
to you all praise, glory and honor and all blessing;
to you alone, Most High, they belong
and no one is worthy of naming you.

Praised by you, my Lord,
with all your creatures,
especially Milord Brother Sun,
who brings day, and by whom you enlighten us;
he is beautiful, he shines with great splendor,
of you, Most High, he is the symbol.

Praised be you, my Lord, for sister Moon and the Stars:
in the heavens you formed them,
clear, precious and beautiful.

Praised by you, my Lord, for Brother Wind
and for the air and for the clouds,
for the azure calm and for all climes
by which you give life to your creatures.

Praised by you, my Lord, for Sister Water,
who is very useful and humble,
precious and chaste.

Praised by you, my Lord, for Brother Fire,
by whom you enlighten the night:
he is beautiful and joyous,
indomitable and strong.

Praised by you, my Lord,
for Sister our mother the earth
who nourishes us and bears us,
and produces all kinds of fruits,
with the speckled flowers and the herbs.

Interfaith Declarations and Worship Observance Resources; The North American Conference on Religion and Ecology; 5 Thomas Circle, NW, Washington, DC 20005

Christianity, Church, new-monasticism, Prayer, Rhythm, theology, Worship, St Francis

The Nativity of John the Baptist

Today is the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, the only celebration of the birth other than the birth of Christ himself... Significantly it is 6 months before Christmas Eve!  John is known as the "precursor" or "forerunner" of the coming Christ, he announces the coming of Christ and in some ways sets the tone of the ministry of Christ.  The Orthodox Church sees John as the last of the Old Testament Prophets, sealing the old order and heralding the new.  Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote...

The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith.  John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new. Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty.

-

Almighty God, by whose providence your servant John the Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Savior by preaching repentance: Make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

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More on the Liturgy after the Liturgy

"the liturgy within the Liturgy", is essential for the Church, but it has to be understood in all its dimensions. There is a double movement in the Liturgy: on the one hand, the assembling of the people of God to perform the memorial of the death and resurrection of our Lord "until He comes again". It also manifests and realizes the process by which "the cosmos is becoming ecclesia". Therefore the preparation for Liturgy takes place not only at the personal spiritual level, but also at the level of human historical and natural realities. In preparing for Liturgy, the Christian starts a spiritual journey which affects everything in his life: family, properties, authority, position, and social relations. It re-orientates the direction of his entire human existence towards its sanctification by the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, renewed by the Holy Communion and the Holy Spirit, the members of the Church are sent to be authentic testimony to Jesus Christ in the world. The mission of the Church rests upon the radiating and transforming power of the Liturgy. It is a stimulus in sending out the people of God to the world to confess the Gospel and to be involved in man's liberation.

Ion Bria

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Merton and Brendan

An interesting article titled "Celtic Monasticism as a Metaphor for Thomas Merton's Journey" by Paul M Pearson. on the Thomas Merton Society's site...

Merton found in Celtic Monasticism and in The Voyage of St. Brendan, in particular, a way of understanding monastic life and his own monastic life and this was why he was so fascinated by this subject and saw in it, as he says in a letter to Dame Hildelith Cumming, a "symbolic tract on the monastic life."

The metaphor of journey is widely used in understanding the Christian life and it is also a metaphor frequently used by and about Merton. It is a metaphor that covered his physical travels of his early life before entering the monastery and his final pilgrimage to the East, it covered his continuing conversion of life as a monk, his conversion to compassion and his conversion to his fellow human beings. Journey was also the metaphor he used to understand his search for God and for his true self.

Alongside such metaphors as solitary explorer, guilty bystander, stranger, wanderer, marginal person, Merton also used the metaphor of pilgrim of himself. In his Asian Journal Merton refered to himself as a pilgrim - "I have left my monastery to come here not just as a research scholar or even as an author. I come as a pilgrim...to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience."

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When does a symbol cease to be a symbol?

Today is Maundy Thursday, today is the day when many rituals take place supposedly pointing back in time to the festival of Pesach (passover), the seven day Jewish festival.  Of course for many of us it points to a specific years celebration, the last Pesach celebrated by Jesus. 

On the news today there is much coverage of the Queen performing the traditional symbolic service... well some of it!  Historically this would have included the Monarch washing the feet of her subjects - a sign of her service to them - but of course this has been abandoned.  One has to question then if this symbol (A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.) has been abandoned, why has it?  Of course there will be voices crying "Security" etc. etc. but has it been abandoned because in our world it's message is simply unpalatable?  The idea of the Monarch (or anyone else in power) so visibly declaring an attitude of humility may simply be so counter cultural that it is impossible to even symbolise!?  Our society has been so infected with individualism and ideas about personal security - looking after number 1! - that washing feet is deeply uncomfortable for all of us, not just those with visible power! 
There is one symbol the Queen will do, she will give 84 (her age) bags of money to pensioners - the purpose of the money is of course intended to be 'symbolic' and not to be spent by the recipients, but is it really symbolic?  I'm not sure it is, it is an act which has replaced a real act - the Monarch giving real help to the poorest in society - and as such it represents something which no longer happens, one could even say it assuages tradition but enables the removal of real responsibility to act!  It makes one feel secure in the believe that the act is/has been done but in reality it hasn't.  So in effect it becomes an excuse for the avoidance of the real meaning, not a symbolic representation of an actual truth.  A symbol is not a tradition it is a representation of something real, it points to something bigger, marks it's reality, communicates it.  A symbol ceases to be a symbol when it replaces the thing it is intended to represent, when it becomes the act itself.

Note, though I am not a monarchist this is not specifically a dig at the Royals, it is more a reflection of how we all can use the language of symbolism to hide our avoidance of uncomfortable reality.  Easter is full of symbols, many of them make uncomfortable demands on us; for sacrifice, for humility, for forgiveness, to allow God to do God's work as God intends not as we want, to become imitators of Christ - living for others and giving our life for others, becoming a servant - a living sacrifice!  Not simply making symbolic representations of the above, excusing us from real change, but actually living the reality of Easter.  Referring to my previous post, it seems that the last supper was a far more public act than I previously thought, it wasn't a private, personal act, likewise "religion" is not a private affair, nor simply a weekly symbolic celebration, Easter calls us to live our faith & hope in a certain way but it also calls us to live it openly and in public and for it to make a real and radical difference to the world we live in.

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Liturgy after the Liturgy... some words for tonights "table"

This is part of our worship tonight - along with using our labyrinth and St Patrick's Breastplate.

Liturgy (The Eucharist) is always the entrance into the presence of the triune God and always ends with the community being sent forth in God's name to transform the world in God's image... Mission is concieved, in other words, as the "the liturgy after the liturgy," the natural consequence of entering into the divine presence in worship. - Bevans and Schoeder “Constants in Context”

The liturgy after the liturgy.
There is no breathing out without breathing in,
There is no flow without ebb,
There is no outpouring without drinking deep of life.

We cannot be love for the community without being drawn deeper ourselves into God,
We cannot bring change to the world without our lives being realigned,
We cannot forgive each other without knowing the freedom of forgiveness ourselves.

We ache for the loneliness of the world and are known by a God who is family,
We cry for a world trapped in greed and are loved by a God who gave up everything,
We fight against a world with little justice and are embraced by a God of mercy.

Forgive us Lord for not taking the time to know you more,
Forgive us Lord for not taking the time to know each other more,
Forgive us Lord for not taking the time to know your world more.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice.  Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are worshiped.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

You welcome us back with simple open arms, forgiven, restored ready to begin work again
You stand naked, mocked and bleeding with the love of a proud parent on your face,
You move in and amongst us with un-ignorable force, yet tenderly,

This moment is a not the end of the road, it is the beginning of a new stage of the journey,
A party is being prepared to send us back into the world in joy, let’s eat and drink!

Sharing the Bread and the Wine

For God so loved the world - may we naturally follow suit,
That he gave his only son - may we learn the wonder of sacrifice,
That all who believe - may our love for one another be the crucial evidence,
May not perish - may we work to halt the collapse of lives, of communities and of creation,
But have eternal life - may we point to the hope you bring now and for the future.

It is time to walk on, this time we walk together, with each other and with God.
We are one body because we share in one bread and drink from one cup.

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Who is your Priest?

That man who called the community together and held it together; he would not be the one who knew the most theology, the theologian.  He would not be the preacher or the evangelist of the community.  He would not be the prophet.  He would not be the most important member in the community, in the sense of being the one who was to make the most important contributions, of which the community might someday be capable.
But he would be the focal point of the whole community, the one who would enable the community to act, whether in worship or in service.  He would be the animator of the individual members of the community, enabling them to make their various contributions, enabling the preacher to preach and the teacher to teach and the prayer to pray and the prophet to prophesy.  He would be the necessary sign of the power that is in all of them.  He would be the sign of unity that exists among them.  He would be their link with the outside, the sign of their union with the outside, the universal church.  He would be their priest.

Vincent Donovan - Christianity Rediscovered

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The Liturgy after the Liturgy

For a while we've been talking about the two-fold vitality of the communion meal for us (when we use the word vital, we mean both senses i.e. essential  and life-giving)  - vital in drawing and binding us a communion/community before and with God/each other (a process in which we are adopted into a God who is community) and vital in drawing and binding us into mission (a process in which we are adopted into a God who is incarnate and dynamic).  This is something which has arisen for us from our experience as a community rather than some applied theos-knowledge... it is not a strategy we have adopted but a reality we have experienced.  These experiences have moved me to fall in love with the Trinity in a new way, a way which now shapes my glimpses of God and my instinct for Church... the mutuality and the mystery, the love and the living, the forgiveness and the fruitfulness, the compassion and the connections... (this is one of the things I loved about "the Shack", the way God is most glimpse-able in relationship, the way the focus of each person of God wants to direct the eye to the wonder of the other persons etc. and what makes me uncomfortable when we sing things like "It's all about you Jesus")  The communion draws our eye to God incarnate and sacramental, to a sent God and a sacrificial God (was it any harder for the Son to be separated from the Parent than it was for the Parent to be separated from the Son?) A God who creates in community, who redeems in community and who sustains in community - source, word and breath...  I guess then that it is no surprise that I find myself deepest in God when I am in community, when I find myself loving others, forgiving others, seeing God in others, giving myself in surrender to others and significantly (and I guess mystically) breaking bread with others [we are one body because we all share in one bread].  Recently reading Bevans and Schroeder's "Constants in Context" I encountered the Orthodox idea of "The Liturgy after the Liturgy".  Most of us no doubt are familiar with the definition of "Liturgy" as "the works of the people", Bevans and Schroeder reference Orthodox Theologians Stamoolis and Ion Bria when they say,

Liturgy (The Eucharist) is always the entrance into the presence of the triune God and always ends with the community being sent forth in God's name to transform the world in God's image... Mission is concieved, in other words, as the "the liturgy after the liturgy," the natural consequence of entering into the divine presence in worship.

Bria (http://www.rondtb.msk.ru/info/en/Bria_en.htm) writes of "the Liturgy after the liturgy" as having four aspects,

1. An ongoing re-affirming of the true Christian identity, fulness and integrity which have to be constantly renewed by the eucharistic communion.

2. To enlarge the space for witness by creating a new Christian milieu, each in his own environment: family, society, office, factory, etc., is not a simple matter of converting the non-Christians in the vicinity of the parishes, but also a concern for finding room where the Christians live and work and where they can publicly exercise their witness and worship.

3. The liturgical life has to nourish the Christian life not only in its private sphere, but also in its public and political realm.  Therefore, the installation in history of a visible Christian fellowship which overcomes human barriers against justice, freedom and unity is a part of that liturgy after the Liturgy.

4. Liturgy means public and collective action and therefore there is a sense in which the Christian is a creator of community; this particular charisma has crucial importance today with the increasing lack of human fellowship in the society. The Christian has to be a continual builder of a true koinonia of love and peace even if he is politically marginal and lives in a hostile surrounding.

I am beginning to think that what these Orthodox Theologians are saying is what we have and are experiencing when we have found ourselves shaping our ecclesiology around the hospitality of the Trinity made manifest in the Communion/Eucharist.  Ian Mobsby introduced me to the phrase "Missio Trinitatis" yesterday.  We have been talking for some years about "Missio Dei" - the idea that Mission is an "attribute of God not an activity of the Church" i.e. God has a/is mission in which we are privileged to participate - but if we then say that if the nature of God is Mission and Community *AND* as Andrew Kirk says that that identity of Church is itself defined by it's participation in God's Mission ("If the Church ceases to be missionary it has not just failed one of it's tasks; it has ceased to being church"!) then how can we not see both our ecclesiology and our missiology as being rooted in community?  We can therefore say that Missio Dei *IS* Missio Trinitatis... God's mission is born and lives in community.  Or as Bevans and Schroeder say of Kirk,

[He] explains that God's mission is based on the very nature of God as such - a community of love and mutuality that overflows into the world in a presence that calls humanity to equality, mercy, mutuality, compassion and justice.

They continue,

The image of the church that resonates most closely with its trinitarian foundation would most likely be that of the people of God.  The church community, participating in God's life, is God's special people, a people living God's life of communion in a covenant of relation and love, a people convinced of it's fundamental equality through it's common baptism in the name of the triune God.  But as communion-in-mission, this image takes on a dynamic meaning as God's people on pilgrimage, God's people chosen not for themselves but for God's purposes, God;s people respectful of the Spirit's workings outside their own boundaries but committed to sharing the full implications of God's covenant with all humanity.

... the sacrament/liturgy of communion, we have found, draws us deeper in to community with each other, in to the God community, and in to community with/for all creation.  I can't help but smile when someone puts into words what we have found through our imperfect practise!

..............................

[update] I found this document from the Reformed Eccumenical Council which says...

A significant shift in theology is the new emphasis on a consistent “trinitarianism” – some even call it a “trinitarian renaissance”: All theological reflection should flow from this basic doctrine on the very being of God. As three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – from all eternity, in his own being, God is relational. This has very important practical implications for our life before God, with one another and in the world. It has implications for the understanding of our participation in the mission of the triune God. To specifically and consistently understand Missio Dei as Missio Trinitatis Dei is to point to the nature of the very life of the triune God, life that is characterized by ecstasies, self-communication, mutuality, relationship, unity and love. The God whose mission is at stake is a God of love and of communion. Mission is the invitation to churches to enter into koinonia with the triune God, constantly inviting others to join and to share in this communion (koinonia). Paramount in the understanding of church and mission is thus the notion of relationality, mutuality, ever sharing in the koinonia with the triune God who once promised “I will be with you always,” and thus sharing a continued koinonia with one another (Venter 2004:5).

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How Deep?

I have a post currently on the Fresh Expressions - Share Blog - Here

Graham Cray told General Synod last week that a crucial factor in the spread of fresh expressions has been 'a new imagination about the form or shape of church'. He is right. We have seen over the last half decade an exploration emerge which concerns not just the stylistic aspects of our gatherings - music, dress, structure, location, etc - but concerns the very substance of what it is to be church. The question is, if this is good, how deep are we willing to go?

At the heart of the matter is how we have sought to be community and how this journey has led us into a new romance with the God who is by nature community. We have had a new encounter with God as Trinity, not a hierarchical Trinity with God the Father as the CEO, Jesus as middle management and the Spirit on the factory floor, but with the Trinity as the root of radically mutual community ... of the meal table, not the boardroom table!

This is changing how we see and do leadership within communities, where we put the emphasis on the flow of gifting rather than the authority of a title or position. Each of us surrenders our gifts to the community and so each of our gifts, rather than being lost becomes animated from use and spreads through the community. When a prophet is willing to give their insight then all our eyes are opened in new ways; when the artist creates, we all find new ways to express ourselves.

So, how deep are we willing to let this change affect us? How much of our systems and structures are we able to challenge? Can we let a 'ground up' shift impact how we think about every part? Can it change the way we think about leadership, about ordination, about our structures? Can it change the way we think about leadership, about ordination, about our structures?

A colleague of mine from Lichfield Diocese, Revd Richard Moy, challenged Synod why it 'locked its trainee clergy away for three years in a place full of other Christians'. I agree. We need to reflect on how we train our leaders, but have we got to go deeper? In this changing world, which will force our church to change, is it time to release leadership, to give it back to communities, to create a new way for sustainability which does not rely on a professional body but on equipping and resourcing communities to lead themselves?

After a recent visit from our new bishop, one member of safespace said how great it was to share with him as he was not at all 'bishopy'! Is it time to reflect the shift from hierarchy to community, not only on the ground but can we as a church become a community of communities, where we rely on each other, where we support each other and allow the quietest voices to be as significant as the most powerful ones?

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