Green Patches

Advent - Waiting and hoping

Given my grumblings yesterday, the arrival, not long afterwards, in my feedreader of this Advent sermon by Maggi Dawn was pretty apposite.  God is to be found in the darkness as well as in the light - and :

If we confidently depend upon the knowledge that God's gifts, unlike Santa's, are not delivered to deadlines, then we can live within the seasons knowing that the gifts they represent will come to us eventually - not necessarily on time, and probably when we least expect them.

 - for the rest of the reflection, go here. 

Thanks for the reminder. It speaks very much into where I've been and from time to time  continue to be on my own journey. 

The artwork above comes from my recent retreat at St Beunos, from a grey, grey period halfway through the week when I was struggling with this  sense of 'spiritual  discombobulation.' 

[p.s And for once, the Linkwithin widget's choice of post is entirely appropriate!]

'Busy' Fauve and Contemplative Gannets - 2

 

"So beware of behaving wildly like some animal and learn to love God with quiet, eager joy, at rest in body as in soul. Remember your manners, and wait humbly upon our Lord's will. Do not snatch at it, like some greedy greyhound, however much you long for it."

 - The Cloud of Unknowing cp 46 

On my bookshelves

Currently reading:

1.  Alan Hargrave, Living Well: Finding a 'rule of life' to revitalise and sustain us, (SPCK 19 August 2010) 

2. Susan Pitchford, God in the Dark: Suffering and Desire in the Spiritual Life, (Liturgical Press 31 May 2011)

3. Trystan Owain-Hughes, Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering,  (SPCK 15 April 2010)

 

 

Pondering Franciscan Spirituality

Alongside ballroom dancing, quite a few visitors to Greenpatches seem to arrive here via a search for Franciscan spirituality. Obviously, I'm not the only one out there trying to pin down that (sometimes) elusive something or other.  It's always good to discover other souls out there, often far wiser than myself, who are pondering and trying to live out a similar path.  So, a happy discovery  - a newish blog: Franciscanponderings  who says:

 

Like a many-faceted diamond giving off different colours and hues as it is turned in the light, so the unsearchable riches of God encountered in Christ are reflected in the great variety of Christian approaches to the spiritual way. Each spirituality has its own tone and unique flavour, with its own particular emphases. I hope in ths blog to share a taste of the Franciscan contribution to the quest of the human heart for what will refresh our soul and give light to our path.

 - to read more, link here

Thank you for sharing your ponderings. I'm looking forward to listening to what you have to say.

 

Silence is golden

At last!  The first episode of the  new documentary The Big Silence, which I blogged about nearly six months ago,  is set to air this Friday on BBC 2. If you live in the UK, that is. I'll be following it with interest, especially in the second programme when, we're told, the participants take part in an eight day silent retreat.

I've   returned from a similar one myself only a few weeks ago, (though mercifully, not accompanied by a camera team!). Mine, too, involved a full eight days more or less in silence; longer than I've been accustomed to before; with a new venue, also, which by its very nature involved a step further into solitude. In a retreat setting I don't have any difficulties with this, seeming to drop into the rhythm of the place quite naturally. The challenges that invariably present themselves in the quietness, however, well, that's quite another matter. They don't always appear to get any easier. Whether or not that's an indicator of greater closeness to God, is open to question. I'd hope the answer would be yes.   And, even as a 'veteran' of nearly seven years to guided retreats,  I still struggle with building those times of quietness and prayer into my daily life.     

So, my sympathies will be with the BBC retreatants and I'm sure I'll find much to reflect on and learn about from their experiences.

Rule of Life

It's that time of year  - when all Franciscan tertiaries are called upon to reflect on, review, and maybe revise their Rule of Life prior to renewal at Francistide in October. Judging by my own experience, the idea and purpose  of a 'rule' isn't always easy to explain to others; the very word has negative undertones to many. I've often found it easier to think of it more as a kind of trellis, or, as Chris Erdman puts it in his great series on the Rule of St Benedict a regula, a guide. Do visit, if you've not already discovered his site; there are some wonderful insights there. Especially his daily guide, well worth lingering over in prayer, mere reading isn't enough.

Pilgrimage: The Road to Emmaus

Pilgrimage is not getting from point A to B on the map while counting the miles.  The distances covered are incidental. What matters is being on the road to Emmaus – the road of discovering Christ in the ‘other’.

Pilgrimage is a school in which we attempt to see God’s hand not only in what we hoped for but what we didn’t want to happen.  It’s the losing method of finding.  You start by stripping your needs down to what you think you can carry, and then – by exhaustion, theft or accident – lighten the load still further.  The only plan you have is what path to follow. and even that doesn’t work out as you imagined it would.

       - Jim Forest in  The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life   With thanks to Pilgrimpace for the quote.

Franciscan Spirituality

Podcast from mootuk. Brother Samuel SSF talks to Ian Mosby about new monasticism and Franciscan spirituality's contribution to the Christian tradition. Challenging stuff : Br Samuel doesn't mince his words regarding woolly thinking, superficiality and generalisations. Quite a reality check for those of us who tend to an overomanticised view of community life in all its forms.

Rebirth and Dark Night

"When a Christian suffers, he says: "God has touched me" - which is true, but only at the end of a series of spiritual stages. For when a Christian suffers, he should begin by saying: "God wants to free me from this diminishment; God wants me to help him to take this cup from me." To combat an ill that threatens us is unquestionably the first act of our Father in heaven. It would be impossible to conceive of him in any other way, and still more impossible to love him. It is a  perfectly correct way of  things - and strictly consonant with the Gospel - to regard Providence across the ages as brooding over the world in a ceaseless effort to spare its wounds and bind up its hurts."

 - (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

Last week  saw  the  penultimate session of Sarum College's current run of The Heart of  the Divine, a wonderful series exploring Christian spiritual tradition in all its variety, and its relevance for us today. We've been so fortunate in having the time and  opportunity to reflect and explore in a way that ( in my experience) is rarely possible in a church setting. For myself, it's been so exciting to note how these monthly sessions have complemented and expanded on similar studies I'm involved with elsewhere.  Well worth the early mornings,long train journey and a brain which nearly always ends the day buzzing round and round like a swarm of bees!

The Chardin quotation above formed part of some reflective worship at the end of a day entitled Rebirth and Dark Night. We spent some time looking at how we might, encounter  and stay with God in the harsh realities  of the events of the 20th and 21st centuries, using as illustrations  the lives of Etty Hillesum, poet RS Thomas, Elie Wiesel and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Discussion and reflection on our own experiences of dark times offered no easy answers. How, or even should we begin to answer the questions of those to whom the   presence or  very existence of  a deity seems an impossibility?  I expect most of us know folk to whom well -intended, but glib soundbites and platitudes have caused irreperrable damage.

Later,  we examined  the way our spirituality changes with the 'seasons,' of life. It may be no small coincidence that most of us were if not yet in 'winter,' certainly experiencing 'autumn,' the more reflective, mellow period  of looking back and letting go, so it was on these two stages of the cycle that we concentrated.

I'd guess that I'm easily one of the youngest, if not the youngest students there. Still,  the darkness theme resonated  for all kinds of reasons, leastways because of my recent health concerns; concerns, which, after a test earlier last week showed clear, look to be happily unfounded. Yet, to confront the prospect of my own mortality, if only briefly, was chilling.  I certainly didn't have any easy answers to give myself. There was a lot of wrestling with and questioning of what to me I hold to be God -  before I began to come to any sense of acceptance, which is maybe, why the words of  Teilhard mean much to me. Yes, God has touched me, but I don't think there are any short cuts in this process for me, and I had, and in similar situations in future,  will have,  to go through the whole cycle  again and again.  I'd  not be true to myself if I didn't, however fluffy and touchy-feely that might sound.

Right old Jacob, aren't I?

Lay Orders - What Are They?

Rosamundi, who'll be making  make her  promises as a lay Dominican in April,  has produced a wonderful blog post on what exactly a lay religious is. Well worth reading, especially for those of us who struggle to explain ourselves to the curious, ("No, we're not wannabe nuns or monks.") or who are interested in finding out more about one of the major spiritual traditions.

There are a good few similarities between the Franciscans and Dominicans, even if we express our mission in a slightly differently : the three Ways of Service for the Franciscans are  Prayer, Study and Work. (I, too have begged, borrowed or bought my body weight in books; something of which Francis would definitely not  have approved!).

I'm interested to learn about how the communal life manifests itself. From what I've picked up,  it seems to be worked out rather more formally and practically than in the Franciscan fold. I've a friend who's a Benedictine oblate, and the set up there looks to be similar. TSSF is Anglican/Episcopal so I can't speak for the original, RC tertiaries. I'll admit, I don't think I'd be entirely comfortable with the model Rosamundi describes. But the question of  how we, as lay Franciscans express our common life, is very much under discussion at the moment. Maybe there's something we could learn from speaking with other parts of the body. 

So thank you again, Rosamundi.