Candle Power

Remember the seventies?\r\n\r\nPower cuts and blackouts. Eating by torchlight and candles.\r\n\r\nIt was great to have a new excuse for not handing in homework.\r\n\r\nJohn’s gospel records Jesus saying “in me there is enough light to live by” and yet so many Christians experience their lives like a family huddled around a candle during a power cut.\r\n\r\nBut LIGHT!\r\n

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  • Light reveals things previously unseen.
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  • Light stops us bumping into things that hurt.
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  • Light reduces the frustration of searching for things you know should be right there in front of you.
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  • Favourite things look better in the light.
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  • Colours come out of the shadows as the light is turned up.
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\r\nWhy wouldn’t we live in the light?\r\n\r\nAnd yet John the Apostle, who obviously pondered this question over a long lifetime, also said that we prefer the darkness to the light.\r\n\r\nWhy?\r\n\r\nBetter the darkness you know?\r\n\r\nBetter the devil you know?\r\n\r\nCome into the ‘light to live by’.

Seasonal Fruit

1st October.\r\n\r\nNew month. New cycle of psalms.\r\n\r\nThe Coverdale translation of the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer is tolerable (just about, to my modern mind) because of the benefits of pattern, structure and rhythm the daily division of the Psalter offers to my life.\r\n\r\nEvery day, for thirty days, morning and evening, the Psalms packaged up to be read in a month.\r\n\r\nOn a month with 31 days I read the Ordinal – the ordination service – on the 31st, which follows straight after the Psalms. It’s good to remind myself what God, my Bishop and the church requires of me.\r\n\r\nBut today, the 1st October, as I turned back to Psalm 1, I paused at the Commination, a little known and hardly used public liturgy describing sins and judgements found in the Bible. It’s been a while since I read it and so this morning I spent a few minutes going through it, I have to say reasonably quickly because it’s not the most enjoyable text in the book.\r\n\r\nAfter the initial introduction and responses, the Commination doesn’t hold back on painting a pretty bleak picture of God’s judgement. There are no paragraphs, just one great block of unrelenting text. And about a fifth of the way through it says this:\r\n

‘For now is the axe put to the root of the trees,\r\n so that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit\r\n is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’

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That goes to the heart of the fear and guilt many Evangelicals face when they reflect on their life.

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Fruitlessness.

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How many times have I sat under a sermon where the preacher has expected action on my part – where action equals fruit – from ‘winning the lost’ to serving the poor. And yet most days are just – ordinary days. Up, eat, work, home, eat, TV, bed. Sometimes a home group or PCC meeting (do they count?).

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The good pastor doesn’t leave the congregation without hope, but turns the page from the Commination to Psalm 1 to paint the whole picture.

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‘Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of sinners …\r\n But his delight is in the law of the Lord…\r\n And he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside:\r\n that will bring forth his fruit in due season.\r\n His leaf shall not wither:\r\n and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper.’

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Of course, we remember, fruit is seasonal.

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Nowhere in the garden do we have continual fruit. For two years our blackcurrent bush was fruitless while it bedded in but our apple tree – in it’s season – was prolific. The strawberries weren’t as fruitful as we had hoped, but in due course some fruit appeared. The chillies were great, the tomatoes were small. And so on.

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That’s not to say that we aren’t surprised sometimes by unseasonal fruit, or that there aren’t other times which we expect to be fruitful that turn out not to be, at least as far as we can see with our limited perspective.

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But we should be encouraged. This psalm reminds us that while waiting for seasonal fruit the tree can be still be thriving. It’s a picture of flourishing, not a picture of a long winter between seasons of fruit.

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And the secret to thriving? Be planted in the right place.

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We may not be able to force out the fruit, but we can take control of our garden.

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And for more on fruit see Seeds in my Pocket

The Mindfulness of Meditation

What do the Singapore Government, the IMF, Bridgewater (the world’s biggest hedge fund), and Pimco (global investment advisers) have in common?

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They all have senior executives who meditate every day.

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In an article in the FT this week a number of senior executives described how they are committed to meditation.

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Mr Peter Ng, the Chief Investment Officer of the Government of Singapore, meditates for twenty minutes two times a day. Mr Ng is in charge of tens of billions of dollars of investments. He says,

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“quieting the mind can help managers conserve energy in daily work life …. and bring greater clarity … and greater clarity makes you more orderly”.

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Sean Hagen of the IMF says that mediation …

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“… helps you focus, which is a good skill, and encourages a ‘one-thing-at-a-time’ approach, which helps slow things down”

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The other benefits listed are achieving equanimity, gaining perspective, increasing decision making skills, and removing ‘confirmation bias’ – the tendency to seek out information that supports your own point of view to the exclusion of data that might be right but contradictory.

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I read this article on Thursday morning and later that day I met up with a fellow leader who showed me cuttings from four different broadsheet newspapers this week on the same subject – meditation in business.

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It seems that meditation is having a good week.

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Which led me to puzzle over two things.

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First, none of these executives linked meditation to religion. They practised ‘secular’ meditation for its intrinsic benefits. So how does that compare to the practise of meditation by people leading the church, where meditation has a rich tradition in spiritual formation?

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I wondered how many church leaders (and that’s not just ordained or licensed people) have the same discipline of regular meditation as these successful businessmen.

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It’s worth some research to find out.

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Somehow I suspect that the findings would be disappointing, certainly if the gauge of successful meditation includes equanimity, perspective, increased decision making skills, and (especially) removing confirmation bias (look at most church mission strategies).

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The second puzzle was this. None of these executives related meditation to religion, and yet the Christian tradition has 2,000 years of expertise in developing high quality, life enhancing,  personal meditation skills. How did we loose the high ground on this?

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Answering this question runs the risk becoming being an academic exercise, so perhaps time would be better spent reflecting on the more important question of how Christian meditation leading to spiritual formation could open new avenues of engagement with people around us.

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After all, meditation in the Christian tradition is not restricted to the elite – either of the world’s financiers or even the church. Rather, Jesus’ guidance given in the Sermon on the Mount, as recorded by an office worker, was for everyone to ‘Find a secluded place …. and be there as simply and honestly as you can manage’*.

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*Matthew chapter 6 verse 6:  [The Message version]

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A walk in the forest

I heard a Jewish tale that went something like this.

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A rabbi was known to be close to God after a lifetime of prayer and service. His disciples ask him to teach them this way of life, so he took them each week through a forest into a clearing where he lit a fire, led them in prayer, and recalled for them the stories of God as told in the scriptures.

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One day the rabbi died, and partly in remembrance of their teacher, and partly because it meant so much to them personally, the students continued their weekly ritual. They trekked into the forest, lit a fire, prayed, and recalled what they could of the stories of God the rabbi told them.

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Over time they started to forget the stories – they never read them for themselves – so they just walked to the forest, lit the fire, and prayed.

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And then they couldn’t see why they were praying, so they’d go to the clearing and light the fire, and talk of the old days.

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Eventually even that was too much for them and they decided that making the fire was too much fuss, and this group of ‘disciples’ ended their days going for an occasional walk in the forest and talking of the good old days.

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From Fisherman to Shepherd – Peter’s New Commission

In John chapter 21 the story is told of Peter fishing when he should have been waiting for Jesus. With the death of Jesus and the uncertain state of affairs Peter faced a key question: What was he meant to do with his life? Was he really meant to go back to fishing?\r\n\r\nJesus answered the question for him. Peter was to change vocation – from fisherman to shepherd.\r\n\r\nIt’s interesting that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus called Peter and said “you’re a fisherman, I’ll make you a fisher of men.”\r\n\r\nBy the end of his ministry Jesus said to Peter, “I’m a shepherd, now you be a shepherd.”\r\n\r\nIn the first case, Jesus, who wasn’t a fisherman, worked with what Peter could offer – his natural skills and training as an expert fisherman. That’s good leadership on Jesus’ part – recognising natural gifts and using them as an entry into ministry.\r\n\r\nBut Jesus didn’t leave him there.\r\n\r\nJesus offered Peter the opportunity to do something he had never done before, a  new purpose in an area where Peter didn’t have outstanding natural abilities.\r\n\r\nThis time Jesus was the expert and Peter was the novice.\r\n\r\nIn the church we love people with expertise. We generally think that anyone with a natural ability will be able to keep using that skill to  ‘keep the show on the road’. But Jesus’ doesn’t just want our expertise. He wants us to reach a point where he can say right, now take on something that’s not so natural, something you will have to grow into.\r\n\r\nIt might be praying for people to be healed. It might be developing a prophetic gift, or going out on a mission team. It might mean leaving the comfort of working in area where your natural competence brings you satisfaction and even recognition and the pride of a job well done. You never know, it might mean becoming a shepherd.\r\n\r\nThe abilities Peter needed to fulfil this new vocation were latent in him waiting to be developed (and quickly – the church was about to be born in a dramatic fashion) but he had the same three teachers that we have today to help him.\r\n

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  • He had the model of Jesus to examine and reflect  upon.
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  • He would also have the Holy Spirit within him guiding him.
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  • And he would have his fellow Christians to support and help him.
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\r\nSo, are you looking for new purpose or direction? Peter’s story reminds us that when Jesus gives us a new purpose we shouldn’t assume it’s something we know about or have done before.

Pilgrimage to the City?

A friend commented recently over lunch on how much there is on TV about religious and spiritual experiences, and particularly about pilgrimage.\r\n\r\nEarlier in the day I had been writing about my own pilgrimage over the past few weeks to discover the church in my city – visiting a dozen churches on a sort of weekly rotation for reflection, mainly around the heart of the city centre.\r\n\r\nLater in that same day I talked to a friend in working rural ministry about the pilgrimage that many people make from the city to the country in search of the dream of a new way of living.\r\n\r\nThese three things together seemed to be pulling me towards more serious reflection on the subject of pilgrimage, so I pulled out Christian Norberg-Schultz’s book ‘Meaning in Western Architecture’.\r\n\r\nI remembered (and still quote) from when I last read it some 30 years ago the journey that Schultz described of the pilgrim travelling from rural Europe to the great monastic churches at Cluny, Speyer, Milan, the still popular Santiago de Compostela, and of course, Hagia Sofia. His theory is that the layouts of the great churches added to the experience of the pilgrim who could come to watch and hear (but not take part in) the rites. When they entered the great monastic naves and wandered awestruck to the ambulatory around the altar they re-enacted the journey from Alpha to Omega, from the chaos of the country to the order of the religious community.\r\n\r\nSo Norberg-Shultz was my fourth encounter with pilgrimage that day, and William Temple was my fifth. That evening I was reading William Temple’s ‘Readings in St John’s Gospel’. The Archbishop of York, as he was then, wrote about the political and religious pressures that moved Jesus from the Temple to the City to the Country.\r\n\r\nA pilgrimage in reverse.\r\n\r\nFrom the order of the religious community to the chaos of the country.\r\n\r\nAnd as I lay in bed I wondered, which pilgrimage is mine?\r\n\r\nFrom Chaos to Order, or from Order to Chaos?\r\n\r\nAm I on the medieval pilgrimage from chaos in daily life to order in liturgy and sanctuary?\r\n\r\nOr am I on the Christlike pilgrimage, leaving the order of the Temple to serve in the chaos of life?\r\n\r\nOr both?\r\n\r\nMmm…. I think that’s it.\r\n\r\nIt has to be both.\r\n\r\nIt has to be both to work.

Snickers and Psalms

For the past six weeks I’ve been re-organising every room, cupboard, shelf, box and bucket I own in an attempt to fit a full office into a full house. It nearly worked. Good planning meant I left the office before the end of the contract. Unfortunately, that meant piles of bags and boxes with nowhere to go at home. We simply ran out of space.

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As things ramped up during the final clear out last week I realised I was living on a meagre diet – a daily Psalm in the morning and a Snickers for lunch. Even evening meals had become a functional affair as I am usually the one with time to cook and I had no time.

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I thought about this diet one day while sitting on a heap of boxes in the garage.

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I didn’t mind not eating much.

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Coming from an Evangelical perspective where being steeped in scripture is one of the keys to our personal walk with God it’s easy to become superstitious about how much we should read the bible in our devotions.

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Two thoughts occurred to me.

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First, to base any relationship on superstition (if I don’t do this then they won’t … love me) is a sign of both insecurity (have I done enough yet?) and possibly stupidity (I have done enough and of course they will … love me). If any other of our relationships were based on such levels of self-doubt it would reveal an unhealthy social framework in need of investigation. In the case of our relationship with God when our insecurity is superstition (God won’t hear my prayers if I don’t …) it is also unbelief.

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Fortunately neither we nor God need worry about such things. The framework is clear.

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We pray. God hears.

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Second, it made me think once again how much we have short changed congregations in our encouragement of Scripture reading. On 25 Alpha courses I have taught – Start with a few minutes of devotions a day (I think it’s seven minutes). And read the bible in a year if you can.

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7 minutes? Really?

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That sounds like “have a Snickers every day for lunch”.

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It’s not what I do. I read for hours. I have projects on the go in the Old and New Testaments. Diagrams. Lists. Numbers. Dates. Notes. Essays. Sermons. Blogs.

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Why would I think that someone else should have a Snickers while I have a gourmet meal?

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So when I get back to church I’m going to change the conversation. First, every week, I’m going to say “I hope you’re all reading your bibles”. We talk about what’s important and yet no-one EVER says that from the front of church.

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And then – the New Testament – the handbook for Jesus’ movement. It’s about 550 pages long. A bit longer than a thriller, a bit shorter than Lord of the Rings.

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Read it. Four weeks, six weeks tops. Read at different times of the day. Read it six times a year. Minimum.

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And if time is short carry a small Book of Common Prayer in one pocket and a Snickers in another and at least read the Psalm of the day at lunchtime.

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Sowing and Reaping

Many of us experience times when we feel we are not sowing spiritual seeds for a future harvest.\r\n\r\nThis is not about times when we are resting, or when we have stepped out of our everyday routines to gain some perspective. During these times it’s right to hold back and find new energy and direction.\r\n\r\nInstead, this is about the times when we have energy, capacity, and capability … but no opportunity, usually to due to circumstances outside our control.\r\n\r\nLeaders in ministry often experience this, but the problem is not exclusive to leaders. In fact, leaders often have more opportunity and power to change and improve their own circumstances than most people.\r\n\r\nNo, this situation could apply to anyone of us.\r\n\r\nThe solution?\r\n\r\nThe best advice I’ve heard recently is from Pete Davies – church consultant and friend:\r\n

“When you can’t sow into your own field, then sow into someone else’s field\r\nand help them bear a harvest”

\r\n … and then you can do what Pete suggests:\r\n

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant”

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