Workshop for Southwark Diocesan Clergy Conference, Swanwick 2009
RENEW-REVIVE-REFRESH: SPIRITUALITY IN THE CHURCH
1. Introduction
Explain who I am – not a guru, a former parish priest for 20 yrs, now a writer [books]
here to facilitate an [the] issue that challenges us all: how do we renew, revive
and refresh spirituality in our churches?
Three thirds: discussion, some reflection to take us deeper, then
some more reflective discussion.
No handouts – but all downloadable from web for those who wish.
2. Discussion to set the agenda
Discuss with partners and then plenary feedback: "OHP 1"
- What is ‘spirituality’ for you?
- Many say they feel they are spiritual, and there is growing interest in ‘spirituality’,
- but don’t believe in ‘institutional religion’ or the church. What is your response?
3. Input
Suggestions: "OHP 2"
Religion… does not mean doctrine, or piety, or purity, or ‘faith’, or ‘belief’,
or my life given to God. It means a willingness to be a fish in the holy water…
to bow the head and take hints from our own dreams, to live a secret life, praying
in a closet, to be lowly, to eat grief as a fish gulps and lives. It means being
both fisherman and fish, not to be the wound but to take hold of the wound. Being
a fish is to be active; not with cars or footballs, but with soul.***
Robert Bly, Iron John (Shaftesbury: Element) p.38
So spirituality is about being active with our lives, tackling the mainsprings from
which good and bad actions spring.
Christianity is primarily a spirituality, and only secondarily an ethic... Jesus
taught not a set of moral instructions, but a way of discovering and desiring the
good life for ourselves. ***
Me, Christian Spirituality, p.199
Spirituality not about being good according to some external law, but about having
and sharing the tools and stories and symbols that enable us to discern and want
and realise our good for ourselves, individually and collectively Or to put it a
more theological way, way, to realise in ourselves the Christ who alone is good.
‘Back to Church Sunday’ – come as you are. Critical response (Mary Wakefield, Rapping
Bishops will hardly bring people back to church, Independent 26 Sept, p.15) – why
should I?
- You’re not OK as you are – you should be different.
- You’re OK as you are and Church won’t make you any different.
- You’re just about OK as you are but we’re going to make you better.
- You’re OK as you are but you’ve got work to do. (Schori) The Church will help you
find ‘the one thing you lack’.
Church is where we are active about soul together.
Analogy of the choir. Gareth Malone and his choir in South Oxey – something very
ecclesial about what he does...Tells me my voice is OK but through singing with
others their voices gets better, people gain in esteem, community is built, and
people create something beautiful together would never have made by myself.
Church as corporate spiritual practice, corporate transformation, the making together
of something with great beauty, the bride Christ is in love with – if only that
would shine to the fore.
Reflect- Relate – Realise.
1. In the Gospels, repeatedly, we read of people first hearing of and then hearing
and seeing Jesus as ‘that man from Galilee who...’ – reflecting on what Jesus did
and who he was. Seek me...
2. Then there is an ‘I-thou’ encounter of the kind which the Jewish theologian Martin
Buber has highlighted so well. People enter into relationship with Jesus in the
course of which they are called, healed or transformed in some way. Seek yourself
in me...
3. And finally, Jesus disappears as an external factor in their lives. Sometimes
– as with Mary Magdalen in the garden (John 20.17-18) and the Gerasene demoniac
(Mark 5.18-20) Jesus actually has to thwart the person’s natural desire to stay
with him and keep the outward relationship going. In John’s gospel (16.7) he tells
the disciples that it is to their advantage that he leaves them, ‘for if I do not
go away, the Advocate will not come to you’ By going away, paradoxically, he goes
on living in them in spirit, as they go on to realise – ‘make real’ – something
of Christ in teaching, healing and transforming others. By ceasing to be a ‘you’
for us, Jesus comes to live and work in our ‘I’. Seek me in yourself...
Suggest people distrust church because either
- it offers only reflection passed on (traditional catholic or rational liberal) without
serious engagement in personal transformation.
- it attempts, evangelical style, to hold people in a second-person relationship.
However intimate, the voice of Christ or God remains ‘out there’.
On the other hand many want ‘instant realisation’ without the disciplines of reflection
and relating. A bit like wanting a technique that will enable me to sing instantly
without having to follow a set melody or relating to others in the choir. I have
developed a way of meditation on Jesus Christ that builds on this movement, Suggest
we try it – picking up at stage 2, relating – on the story of the rich young man.
Note that though there will be discussion after, and you can share anything you
want to, you won’t have to share anything at all.
4. Meditation: relating to realising: Rich Young Man
1. Settle down...posture...breathing [music]***
2. Read Mark 10.23-31 (paralleled in Matthew and Luke) As Jesus started on his way,
a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked,
"what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered.
"No one is good--except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do
not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud,
honor your father and mother.'" "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since
I was a boy." Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said.
"Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because
he had great wealth.
3. Start to seek yourself in Christ. Imagine yourself as the rich man, rushing up
to Jesus, offering your extravagant devotion and your pious question. You have ‘inherited’
a lot, but you want to inherit that extra thing that will make your life full and
complete. What are your feelings as you keel, and what are your feelings when Jesus
responds with that gentle rebuff ‘Why call me good?’ and proceeds to trot out what
you already know, and are so sure you have kept since you wee a boy
4. Focus your breathing on those questions... "OHP 3" What must I do... to inherit
eternal life...
5. And now Jesus is saying there is one thing you ‘lack’. He invites you to sell
all you have, and then you will have treasure in heaven? Picture his gaze of love,
and his words to you. What, in his love of you, does Jesus consider you ‘lack’ –
what (possession or attitude or habit or desire or belief...) is it you need to
give away, to have treasure in heaven....
6. Now dissolve this image to a simple feeling, of being addressed by love, yet
pulled down and made sad by attachments... like a running stream of love, flowing
over a stone too heavy to move...
7. Now start to seek Christ in yourself. Become that running stream, encountering
a heavy resistant stone. Imagine the man, whom you love .. see his countenance change
as you speak to him, ‘falling’ under the weight of his attachment.
8. Focus your breathing on "OHP 3" One thing you lack... Sell all you have... Have
treasure in heaven...
9. Reflect on a time – if you can remember one – when you have so clearly seen in
love what someone needed to do to be free, and yet they could not do the one thing
they lacked. Dwell on the feelings this evoked.
10. And now let the face of the one who cannot change be your own. Let yourself
be the Christ in you addressing the resistant and sad and heavy one in you... Identify
the particular chains that hold you down right now, and identify that in you which
is urging you to be free, to have treasure in heaven...
11. Now slowly dissolve this image and the feelings attached to it. Come back to
this room. When you are ready, you may just want to sit still, or you may want to
stretch tour legs, wander around or out...
5. Key aspects of developing the Church as a corporate spiritual creation.
"OHP 4"
1. Being OURSELVES HERE NOW
Affirming that it is here and now, in this church, this area, with these people,
in these homes, in this area, here and now, that spirituality is built up. No ‘elsewhere’.
Gregory Freuwirth* Martin Laird*
2. Prioritising transformation over ‘business’
Not solemn, though. Preserving a child-like ‘passionate openness’ but not a childish
attachment or escapism. A tough and reality-engaged search, willing to discard and
experiment. This may involve shedding the ‘business’ of the Church, creating times
that are business free, like Lent: entering the desert together. Affirm one another’s
wounds – they are the precondition of change. Lament together and rejoice together.
Belden Lane* Eugene Peterson*
3. Reflect – Relate – Realise
in balance, as described. Be a reflective, interrelating, and Christ-realising Church.
4. Affirming the Spiritual Journey in the Liturgy
There is a tension here with our need to be user friendly and entertaining. Any
liturgy that engages the spiritual depths – whether in a catholic, evangelical,
liberal or charismatic way – will be awesome, daunting, sometimes difficult, sometimes
boring! Using the Liturgical Year as a Spiritual Journey. Spirituality in Season
*
5. Being thoughtfully Eclectic.
Interacting with other spiritualities with clarity and without defensiveness. Using
what actually works, not what we feel confident about in advance. Risk. Finding
what attracts people to New Age, Buddhism etc. Letting ourselves be attracted. Shamelessly
incorporating where we see shared ground. For me, and for Cowan, ‘taking Jesus seriously’
has gone hand in hand with Buddhist practices. John Cowan*, next books: Buddhist
Christianity, Responding well to Hurt
6. Embracing spiritual difference within the whole
Accepting that our pathways, our obstacles and our goals may be radically different.
Receiving the spirituality each new person brings, learning as well as teaching.
Finding what note each person brings to they bring to the whole harmony. Enneagram
"OHP 5" - Simon Parke* and my meditation on website
7. Normalising spiritual direction
Treating spiritual direction not as an arcane mystery for the hyper-mystical but
as normal for those who are serious about transformation. Finding ways in which
this can happen, accepting that the priest won’t be the spiritual director Margaret
Guenther* [Sue Pickering new]
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