Green Patches

Blog of The Week - Franciscan Ponderings and LutheranChik

image: freedigitalphotos.net:xedos4

 

 

Two contenders this week for bloggers who've made me stop and think. 'Community'  is a bit of a buzz word nowadays.   What exactly  is it? How do we define it? Why do we need it? Is it the answer to all ills? Was there ever a 'golden age' when everybody was enveloped in a caring, sharing, loving community like the  folk in the above picture, neighbours dropped in and out of each others' houses to borrow a cup of sugar and we all watched  out for the children? And now, in the age of the so called nuclear family, where is 'home' and how do we 'do' community in a new way?

That churches have and should take the lead in this seems to be a given. Franciscan Ponderings reflects on what we can offer here. This is the ideal, yet as LutheranChik in Losing My Religion; And What Does Community Mean? and, I'd suspect, many many of us have discovered at some point, even or more especially they all too often fall short of this ideal.  You can preach it, teach it, but, (excuse the tired cliches here) when the chips are down and the rubber hits the road, all that matters is IMO, do you do it? Does  your church, organisation, group, really reach out to everyone as in the illustration? All of the time?  Are you sure? Or might it sometimes appear more like this? (And before everybody rushes to say 'hypocrite,' yes, I'm as guilty of neglect as anyone.)

image: freedigitalphotos.net:savikeatavee

Or even - and here's the downside of modern technology  - like this?

image: freedigitalphotos.net. renjithkrishnan

 

I'm fortunate  - my present church is pretty good at watching out for folks.   That's not been my experience everywhere, though, sadly.  I don't think it  needs to be an emergency necessarily either. To me, the true test of community churchwise is  - when it all goes pear-shaped or simply  a tinge of grey, 'Who you gonna call?' Or even better - 'Who's gonna call you?' 

And no, there are times when a FB 'like' just doesn't cut it.

 

Forever Autumn - Blog of The Week

 

Pom- pom- pom, pompom, pompompompom pom-pom-pooommm...

Never repeat yourself, did I say? Oh dear.  Oops, rules are made to be broken and all that... Guaranteed to make  even the most po-faced personage  smile (I'd love to see what they'd make of Franciscan liturgy),  thought-provoking  and possessed of  an unerring timing that helps me put all my angst-provoking spiritual lingerie-entangling into perspective.  Yes, Blog of The Week goes yet again to those cyber-coenobites and liturgical virtuosos  - The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley. 

 

Blog of The Week - Nun other Than a Franciscan Sister

We're back on time this week.  The last few days I've spent on pilgrimage with church,  the which has influenced my choice. With matters of journeying, physically and spiritually,  being very much on my own mind,  Nun other Than a Franciscan Sister 's  post on transition seemed pretty appropriate. What really grabbed me here was Sr Patricia's quote by Dr Howard Thurman:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." 

 

Thank you.

 

Last week's Blog of The Week - Opinionated Vicar.

 

'Rule of Life' - Commitment to transformation

"The keeping of a rule is not an end in itself. It is not so that  we can feel more in control or that our lives might be in order. It is not even so we can feel closer to God. Its purpose is transformation: that we make become more Christlike... It is not about a one-off change. It is rather about an ongoing, life-long openess to keep on being changed, with and by the communities which we are committed to."

 - from Alan Hargrave's Living Well: Finding a 'rule of life' to Revitalise and Sustain Us, SPCK Publishing 2010

'Living Well' is one of my current reads.  It's compact, accessible and practical  yet deep. Would that it had been around when I was working out my own rule  with TSSF (Third Order, Society of St Francis). He uses the ancient rule of St Benedict as a structure for his reflections, but the book is designed for anyone who is searching for life-giving transformation and a pattern to their lives.  And 'community' includes : family, partners, work, church, friends; any and all of the groups we live and work with day by day.

Franciscan joy, foolishness and daring

"People think St Francis was about the bees and butterflies, and charming birds and taming wolves; but that’s the smallest part of the story. He was a monumental figure in his humility and littleness. He has so much to tell us in this modern age…

 

The Third Order has grown and is very autonomous now. It used to be very much run by the First Order, but as that has shrunk, as most reli­gious communities have, it has had to sort itself out and run its own affairs.

 

It has tended to become full of older people, and is starting to get top-heavy; so we’re trying to address that. As it grows and gets more organised, there’s always the trap of falling into an “organisation” spirit — as against the Holy Spirit — but people in the Third Order are far too individual for that to happen. I don’t think we’ll lose the sense of joy, foolishness, and daring that Franciscans have always had a reputation for. "

 -  from Church Times Interview: with Paul Alexander, Franciscan tertiary and actor

(for the full interview go here - online edition subscribers only) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Green on Staffa

 

or to be strictly accurate - a whiter shade of pale.  Eagle-eyed readers with 2o/20 vision may just be able to identify the faint blobs in the water as puffins.  When the time came, and after one posponement of the trip - from Iona to Staffa, the sea was so rough that the boat owner decreed that it wasn't possible to land. Happily, we were still able to circle round the coastline to view Fingal's Cave and umpteen types of seabirds, including these cheerful little stripey chaps, with the emphasis on the little. 

 So, yes, I did fulfil my ambition, albeit not quite in the way I'd expected. In the event, I spent most of the trip down in the hold throwing up, as did a growing number of passengers as the trip went on. At one point I raised my head for air to find myself surrounded by silent, grim-faced teenagers, (we were sharing the trip with a school group staying at the McLeod Centre), paper bags held to their mouths, looking for all the world like some new and weird species of elephant.  You'll have to forgive me the hyperbole; after downing enough travel sickness pills  to fell your average pachyderm, my imagination was running along strange lines indeed.  Never mind, in true Blue Peter tradition (Here's one I made earlier), Mr GP rose personfully to the occasion and conducted a mini-photoshoot with one battered 'Old Teddy,' who, after the best part of 200 miles spent stuffed into my rucksack, was brought out to strut his stuff and model his owner's original Puffin Club Founder Members Badge . 

We rolled back home to Iona after that, and, this (still somewhat wobbly) seabird was plunged straight into lunch duty, followed by daily chores - cleaning the loos! 

Was I glad I went on the trip? From a safe distance of over a week...yes.   And the whole holiday/pilgrimage - a hefty 200 miles or so winding our way from Durham to Oban on foot? A definite yes! Which is just as well, after three years in the planning. (It's amazing what daft things one can think up on a rainy week in Cornwall over a pint!).  At time of writing - over seven days since we returned home, I'm still processing it all.

To the last section of the trip, one of the gathering weeks spent with the Iona  presence in the Abbey, again, I'm still pondering what was (for me anyway), a very new, and often challenging experience of living in and building community. If you're not familiar with what staying there entails, this blogger here gives a good account of a typical week.  [would have commented, but this Puffin is technically challenged and wasn't able to get my id to work].

As a member of a dispersed community myself, (TSSF), I was particularly interested in the various takes on living out the Iona Community's rule and purpose out in the world, particularly as to how this works out in practice, and, in retrospect, would have liked to have asked far more questions on the topic: Does it really operate 'as it says on the tin?' Like TSSF, the community has a small, local  group structure  which is intended to serve as a member's primary support structure. What are different peoples' experiences of these? On paper, we appear to have a good many similarities, with maybe a slightly different nuance placed on some forms of service. Overall, I got the impression that that Iona membership is more of a tough call than TSSF; it's ecumenical in name as well as in spirit, and, that  concerted (and unlike tertiaries, group ) social and political action is more than just an obligation for Those Who Like That Kind of Thing , it's an imperative. 

Both communities are growing, evolving and constantly trying to work out how to live as an example of authentic Christian witness 'in the world.'  Both are - or should be, profoundly countercultural. Tertiaries share a common spirituality; but looking at the order through a more sociological lens as in the examples here it's plain that members' experiences, expectations and sense of vision vary enormously. As I expect will be the case for any community or association.  With the rapid growth of  dispersed communities of all kinds today, I guess we can all learn so much from each other. 

Little did I know, over forty years ago that I was effectively, making out a community rule of life!