Be Longing to Belong: a Postlude

In the past few days, circumstances have illustrated some of the the thoughts I had in my last post.

Steve Irwin, the famous Australian naturalist and "croc-botherer" sadly died while filiming a television programme after being stung in the heart by a stingray.

Richard Hammond a British Television presenter, recording a programme on cars, is nearly killed when trying to break the British land-speed record in a jet-powered car.

It seems that the dreaded ratings war in the Television Industry is driving presenters to do more and more dangerous stuff for the purposes of our entertainment. While their devotion to the furthering of human experience and understanding of the world around us is commendable, I worry that the demands of television companies to entice people to keep their eyes glued to the box, are more and more unreasonable and dangerous.

May we learn to find ways of participating in the human dialogue with God, not from our armchairs, but actively in our lives. May God restore Richard Hammond and receive Steve Irwin into His loving arms.

Be longing to belong

After reading Dr. Michael Moynagh's book Changing World, Changing Church, it seems that consumerism has penetrated to the very heart of Western Culture and indeed is penetrating even the heart of the Western Church.

Day by day we are presented with the most minor of choices. Cup of coffee? The questions come in - regular or large? latte, mocha, cappuccino? shot of this? hint of that? ...et c. Michael Moynagh suggests that this is how the Church will eventually become, and lists some very exotic forms of church. Imagine! a church for dancers, a church for chess players, a church for windsurfers... et c. each person insisting how their worship is carried out and in referring to others "praxes" with the phrase "well, they can do that if they want, but it's not my cup of tea."

For me, this is a horrible vision of the future. Church becomes less a way of life and more an indulgence of some fleeting whim or taste. We choose to be with one group of people, but not others. If there were a Church for Manchester United Supporters, it is doubtful that unless they were truly moved by the love of Christ that they would willingly go to the Church of Chelsea Supporters.

Look at the disciples! Wouldn't any sane leader choose people from the same background to further his cause so as to avoid fragmentation? Not Our Lord. As C. S. Lewis says, He was either mad, bad or Son of God, and part of His "madness" then was to choose St Matthew a tax collector (and hence Roman collaborator) and St Simon the Zealot! How these two must have hated each other at the beginning, or perhaps would have done had they met under different circumstances. It's clear that Christ wants everyone to be part of the same Church, but a Church that follows His teaching rather than the teaching of the whims of the human heart.

If two people with opposing desires are to be part of the same Church, then it's clear that at least one of them will not have their desires met. A Church of coffee drinkers will have the Angl0-Latte wing and the Roman-Mocha wing, so if the coffee being served that day is Cappuccino, then neither party is going to be satisfied. So what? Why have they come to church in the first place?

We can fill our lives by trying to get precisely what we want down to the number of granules of sugar we put in that blasted cup of coffee. But in filling our lives with this minutiae and concern for adiaphora, we push out God. In order to worship properly, we cannot be content with the life that we have now. We have to be longing for something, and that something should be God, not the perfect latte. Life can never satisfy our longing for God, and that's really what should give Christians that distinctive "saltiness" in the world: they don't care what they're drinking, they're just thankful it's coffee. It is the common yearning for God that brings St Matthew and St Simon together.

But what is worship in the first place? It is putting the object of worship first in our lives - giving "worth-ship". Surely if we are demonstrating that God is worth the most in our lives, then our love of a particular brand of coffee should be the last thing that we bring to mind. Worship is the submission of life to the object, and if the object of our worship becomes "God, but only in a certain manner" then that is pure and simple idolatry - the worship of a God of one's own imaginings.

In order to belong to the Church, we have to be longing for Christ. Indeed, if we are truly content with the life that we have, then we have lost Christ! The life of Christ is beyond the reach of this life. The Church should be a place of people, all wanting the same thing, the same Redeemer, the same God -crying out like the young ravens in the wilderness (Ps cxlvii.9) and being satisfied with His Body in sacramental form. But even the Blessed Sacrament should not be enough for us because our physical nature is fleeting and passes away from His Eternity, and so our experience of Communion fades and we hunger once more. It will not always be so -He has seen to that!

Any parish Church that follows the teaching of Christ is formed by people who are looking to fill up the void of human existence with Him for Whom that void was created. If we choose to fill that void with coffee, then what fools we are!

Battling Prattling

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Swanscombe on 17th September 2006 based on the epistle of St James iii.1-12.

Mr. Young’s year 8 class is a little boisterous today.

It’s all because Eric has brought in
his new mobile phone
which can take photographs,
play Gnarls Barklay’s number one hit
as a ring-tone
and has 37 different games
of Tetris on it.

Eric is just showing his friends a Tetris cheat when Alan,
a larger boy with bit of a reputation,
takes Eric’s phone out of his hand
and steps on it,
breaking it into a thousand pieces.

Of course, all this gets back to Mr Young
who soon has Alan in detention
with a flea in his ear.

“How dare you treat someone else like that!
Listen to me!
You’re a wicked child,
and you won’t amount to anything
with that attitude in life.”

Fair?

[PAUSE]

The trouble is Alan
has always been called a “wicked child”.

You see,
Alan’s mother died in giving birth to him,
and as a result,
his father has difficulty loving him.

What do you think of Mr Young’s choice of words?

Is Alan really a wicked child?

If he’s told that he’s a wicked child,
mightn’t he eventually come to believe it?

[PAUSE]

As Christians know,
we’re all capable of evil acts,
but we learn to separate
who people are
from what they do.

“Hate the sin, but not the sinner”,
that’s what we say,
isn’t it?

The trouble is,
Mr Young is not saying that to Alan.

Mr Young’s tongue has slipped up.

In his anger, he is just prattling.

[PAUSE]

We join the Lord and His disciples
as they walk around Caesarea Philippi.

Peter is feeling quite thrilled
at having won
the “spot-the-Messiah” competition.

And then Jesus starts talking about
what has to happen to that very Messiah:
humiliation,
pain,
torture
and death.

And this upsets Peter, because,
having found the Messiah,
he’s being told that
the One to Whom he wishes to devote his life
is going to meet
a terrible, horrible end.

The thought
“If you don’t do something,
you’ll lose your Messiah,”
burns within him until,
at last,
Peter can stand it no more.

Taking his beloved Lord to one side,
Peter says, “for goodness sake, Jesus,
don’t talk like this.

This is not how it’s going to be
and you know it.

We’ll be there to stop any harm coming to you.”

Jesus looks around at the others,
then the reaction:
"Get behind Me, Satan!

For you are not mindful of the things of God,
but the things of men."

Harsh, don’t you think?

Would you like to be called “Satan”
by one whom you love,
and one who loves you?

And what has Peter done?

He seems to have demonstrated concern
about the Lord’s welfare.

Is it a crime now to care about the people we love?

[PAUSE]

Peter’s words upset Jesus
because they show that
Peter is not yet ready
to be a teacher of the Truth.

God knows full well that
Peter will lead the Church well as a bishop
ordained by Christ Himself,
defending it against all the horrors of the world.

God knows that Peter will end his days
crucified upside-down on Vatican Hill
for love of Jesus.

But Peter is far from ready.

Suppose Jesus had listened to his words.

“Okay Peter, you’re quite right,
let’s go back to Galilee
and forget the whole thing.

Phew!

Nearly came a cropper then, didn’t I?”

No Resurrection, no Salvation.

Peter’s words obviously tempt Jesus to give up,
just as Satan tempted Him in the wilderness.

But Jesus knows the Truth,
and, despite that truth,
will not spare Himself
the scourge,
the crown of thorns,
the nails
and the spear.

At the moment, Peter’s words are unreliable.

He’s just prattling.

[PAUSE]

This is a problem that teachers face.

Just how does a teacher put
thoughts and ideas into words
so that students can understand them,
and then go on and use them well?

It isn’t easy, because you have
to know how you are thinking
and how the student is thinking!

Teachers would love to know
the thoughts of their students
just to make sure that their lessons are sinking in.

If you use even one wrong word,
then you can utterly ruin
any potential understanding that a child could have.

It’s a reality that all teachers have to face
- have they explained things clearly enough?

Is what they have taught accurate?

Are they guilty of prattling?

[PAUSE]

If one word can cause a child to go wrong,
what about a culture which is
saturated with words and noise?

Look at the information
and misinformation
that we meet on a day by day basis.

One year we are told eggs are good for us,
the next year they’re bad for us.

We’re told there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
and then that there are none.

The world in which we live is filled with prattle
–meaningless noise,
thoughtless words,
and irrelevant information that corrupts us all.

No wonder people are being misled
into some very dark paths.

[PAUSE]

And no wonder
that they will not listen to the Church.

The Church has become one voice among many,
and God’s still small voice of calm
is drowned by cries of all kinds.

No one wants to hear a voice of love
that says that submission to the will of God
is the road to everlasting happiness.

No wonder
we don’t get new people through the church door
if we are just adding to the noise around them.

They only hear words,
not what God is saying.

Even the places where we worship
we can fill with noise,
so that we fail to hear the word of God.

“Lord, we just want to praise You,
we just want to glorify Your name,
we just want to give You thanks.”

And God says, “I just want to get a word in edgeways.”

One theologian calls this condition
“the Prattler of Pious Platitudes”
- the tendency within each of us
to block out the words of God
with faint and empty praise.

[PAUSE]

If the message of God
is being drowned out by the noise of prattle,
then perhaps the only way
to ring out God’s message of love
loud and clear
is to live the truth of that message of love
in our lives.

Perhaps we don’t have to say a thing
in order to show the love of God to people,
just let our lives be an example to everyone.

The more closely we follow God,
the more His light shines in us,
and that light is utterly unmistakable.

So how do we live our lives
as beacons of the love of God?

Have you been listening?

Have I been prattling?

Big Death and Little Death

Yes, it's another post about Sex! Or is it? Elizabethans used to refer to the act as "the Little Death", and therein perhaps lies the root of humanity's eternal preoccupation with the act of procreation. Sex and Death have been taboo subjects at one time in history or other. Sex was taboo for the Victorians, whereas Death was something of great fascination for them. Now the roles are reversed, Sex is the driving force behind modernity and Death something to be glossed over.

For the Christian, both are terribly important because they both mark fascinating singularities (almost in a mathematical sense) of what it means to live. Conception is the start of life, expiration the end of physical existence. Fr Basil Matthews, erstwhile Abbot of Elmore Abbey, stated that life begins with an inspiration and ends with an expiration - a breath. I'm fond of that picture because of its relationship with the spirit, the pneuma, the ru'ach. But nonetheless, life begins, not with a physical breath, but with the amalgamation of two microscopic gametes and this in conjunction with the inspiration of a soul. An organism comes together, and then a while later falls apart again.

The fact that there is an imbalance between our regard for Sex and Death means that our view of life is skewed terribly. "In the midst of life, we are in death" - the two go together! However, in modernity, our preoccupation is with Sex, as a way of forgetting about death.

"The look" is to be young and thin, full of vigour. Our teenagers are bombarded with images of scantily-clad peers, the natural drive being supplemented by the need to demonstrate that vigour. Our elders are held in disrespect, because they are old and ugly, steadily getting weaker until they disappear into boxes in the ground or behind a curtain. Death is the punishment for becoming unsexy, which we must all steadily become, if "unsexy" means older and less potent.

Mankind craves potency, control over his own destiny, and seeks to extend that potency artificially if need be. And Death comes along, and renders his power infinitesimal. Modern "Sex" then attempts to drive away Death, only the attempt is utterly futile, not least because Sex to stave off Death is already dead.

The Christian position has always been the greatest reverence for both Sex and Death, and this is why the Church is "obsessed" with both. Except that it isn't obsessed, certainly not as the world is. Sex is good - it means Life - and Death is good, because Death has no longer any sting for the Christian, but is the doorway to an eternity full of the ecstasy and passion that both life and death possess.

In accepting that we have no control over our life, but submitting to the will of Christ we are free to be born, to engender life and to die without the need to prove anything. We therefore enjoy Sex - and I believe that even celibate Religious Folk are given the sense of euphoria that accompanies it - and we actually enjoy Death because our passage from this world means the ultimate and aweful propect of being with the Someone who loves us all.

In Christianity, neither the Big Death, nor the Little Death has the sting, neither the grave nor the bedroom has the victory.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

In my online meanderings, I came across this article by Catherine Thiemann which seeks to analyse the activities of the AAC and the network. A number of my friends have seen it as a direct insult by someone who doesn't really want to listen to what the AAC and the Network have been saying.

If we're honest then there have been harsh words on both sides of the impending schism. We Anglo-Catholics are reknowned for being spiky in more ways than one, and I myself must confess to having been very sharp with posters on the Anglo-Catholic Central message board.

I don't think Liberals understand the passion that we Anglo-Catholics have for the true worship of God. Liberal worship seems tailored to the individual rather than to God, and that in itself is disunifying, schismatic at the heart, because it renders the individual will as being authoritative over Tradition. We cannot choose to preach that homosexual practice is a not a sin, because the Divine Revelation says that it is a sin. The charge that Dr Thiemann lays at the door of the Network is that of being "incorrect and divisive." If the AAC and the Network have been so, then it is not in the region of Christian Orthodoxy, which is where Dr Thiemann's understanding of the Church fails.

As an Anglo-Papalist, I believe that that the Orthodoxy of the Anglican Church exists from its time in union with the Holy See. Anglo-Catholics proper disagree with this notion and believe that Anglicanism has possessed an Orthodoxy and Catholicity from the outset. Whether Anglo-Papalist or -Catholic, there does exist an Anglican Orthodoxy and both groups agree that exists in some form, namely the Orthodoxy of Scripture and Tradition and the use of Reason in subordination to these two. The Articles say that the Bible contains all that is necessary as pertaining to Salvation, so why doe Liberals still persist in trying to reinterpret the Bible to suit their well-intentioned, but dangerously erroneous self-inspired theses.

Dr Thiemann quotes the AAC chairman, the Rev'd Canon David Anderson as saying that Reason cannot be trusted. Indeed it cannot if it departs from Scriptural and Traditional bases. I think the Liberal idea of Reason being used here is "any argument, or thesis, that can be used to get a text that says 'black' to reveal that it is in fact saying 'white'."

This Liberal understanding of Church treads a fine line between being Christian and being "spiritual but not religious" (see below). Indeed, I learn that in the Diocese of Ely, a priest who has converted to Hinduism has been given "permission to officiate", the same permission that I possess to stand up in Church and preach a sermon. If Dr Thiemann's maxim "by their fruits shall ye know them" is applied, then we see the Liberals encouraging syncretist and counter-Christian ideals.

That's not to say that the Network is faultless in its dealings. If the accusations against Howard Ahmanson are true (and I really don't know if they are), then he must realise that going back to Levitical Law is out of the question. I have seen FiF priests treat a woman "priest" very shabbily.

What to do?

Well Anglo-Catholics and -Papalists must realise that in a world of words, the voice of Orthodoxy is going to be ignored, especially by those who claim to have the moral high ground because they use Reason. Perhaps we must concentrate on putting our house in order, unifying the Catholic Faith and by living that Faith as an example to the world. Perhaps when we're stable, we can begin a dialogue with the Liberals, but I think we need our space. Do we split from the Liberals? We may have to. Not out of hatred, but because we must walk apart like David and Jonathan on opposing sides of the divide. If the Liberals want a reason, the we can say "we have to be true to ourselves" and that will satisfy them because of their appeals to individualism.

Liberals must realise that the individualism of the secular world is horribly infectious. Our Lord said "deny thyself, pick up thy cross and follow me." I do feel for homosexuals because of the cross that they have to bear if they do deny their "right" to practice. I have a very dear friend who has indeed taken up that cross and has borne the pain of the cross to the admiration of his friends and his life does indeed point to Christ. To deny one's one will and bear the will of God as a cross is the true way forward, not to indulge one's will and then "reason" that it is in fact the will of God. If we suffer because of the will of God, then He has promised us something terribly special in the life to come.

Is this a rant? I hope not. I desire Unity, but not at any price. Was Judas included in the Lord's prayer ut unum sint?

Ye Modern Muficke Sonnge

A song written in my last year as an undergraduate. Silly, but how true do you think it is?

I have written music to go with it. The verses are a parody of the well-known "song" Shine, Jesus, Shine. The chorus is an ornamented version of Purcell's hymn tune "Westminster Abbey." Feel free to use your own imagination!

1. Music’s gone through different phases,
Odd adjustments and various crazes.
Yet what I find really perturbing,
Perplexing, alarming, and rather disturbing:
Modern Hymns,
Modern Hymns!

Chorus:
Praises To the English Hymnal,
Solid and stable as a rock.
Never wrong or unpredictable,
Timing stricter than a clock,
Yet poetic and eclectic,
And with style that none should mock.

2. Modern hymns have got lots of oddities.
Misprints and page turns are not commodities.
Timing’s erratic and I don’t know what key it’s in;
Looks like D flat but I don’t see how G fits in:
Augmented fourths!
Augmented fourths!

Chorus:
Praises to the English Hymnal,
Realm of concord and harmony.
Dissonance is merely passing
Polyhymnia’s testimony.
True and proper, won’t come a cropper.
Nothing false, fake or phoney.

3. Where’s the poetry in modern musicianship?
Rhyming’s slack and the grammar be on the slip.
"Gonna" isn’t a word in the Testament!
Joshua and Moses wouldn’t know what on Earth it meant!
In English Please!
In English Please!

Chorus
Praises to the English Hymnal,
Worthy Paragon of language pure.
Thou declaim’st in English perfect
No split infinitives must we endure.
Theologically,and pedagogically
From all folly doth us inure!

4. OK, the green book’s got lots of big words in it,
And the hymns last well over a minute,
But each line fits the tune, not vice versa,
Modern Hymns just get worser and worser!
Some lines really don’t fit at all!
Some lines really don’t fit at all!

Chorus:
Praises to the English Hymnal
And perhaps to AMNS!
Sixteen verses of "Let all Mortal"
Cause no permanent anguish or distress.
"Praise my Soul" or "Love Divine"
Are loved by all. Well, more or less!

The Dawn of a New Day.

I'd thought I'd lost this sermon with the great laptop crash earlier this year. However, I'm pleased to have found this, my first Easter Day Sermon, in a box of papers. I enjoyed preaching it, I hope you enjoy it.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul's Church, Swanscombe on Easter Sunday 27th March 2005, bast on St John xx.1-18

It may be still dark,
but can you at least hear him running?

Four o'clock in the morning,
and he is running,
faster, ever faster into the darkness,
heart rattling like a pneumatic drill,
lungs burning,
gasping for breath.

This young man has easily overtaken his friend,
leaving poor flabby old Peter
wheezing and puffing somewhere behind him
in the gloom of the night.

He has to see this for himself.

Can it possibly be true?

The horrible events of the weekend
are carved into his brain:
betrayal and taunts,
whips and thorns,
cross and blood,
tears and death.

Only a few moments ago,
he was overwhelmed by misery like the others,
and then that terrible report
from Mary Magdalene,
Mary,
the woman that the world once called mad.

Her words.
"He's not there!
They've taken Him away!"

[PAUSE]

It is still dark,
the dying night still turns rocks and trees
into phantoms on the landscape
yearning for the morning.

The wind whistles through his hair;
his sweat blinds him as he runs,
confuzed,
dazed.

"Why?
Why have they taken Him?"

"What more can they do to Him?"

[PAUSE]

The tomb is in sight,
just a cave in the bleak landscape.

The rock that formed the door lies to one side,
thrown out of its groove,
making a new home for itself
among the other rocks.

He sees the dark opening,
and finally he lets his pace drop.

With chest heaving,
he pauses at the entrance,
stoops down and looks into the tomb.

But he doesn't go in .

John,
the disciple whom Jesus loved,
the one who reclined next to Jesus three nights ago,
the one who has raced so fast to get here
to find out what has happened,
stops.

He glances inside only for a second,
but stays exactly where he is.

All Creation screams at him, "Why?"

"Why haven't you gone in?"

Why, John, have you raced all that way
why have you nearly done yourself a mischief
running so hard,
and do not see what you've come to see?

Do you know why he's stopped?

[PAUSE]

He's the first to look into the tomb.

Mary saw the stone rolled away:
that was enough to send her skittering away in panic
back to the others.

He can see the linen cloths,
but that doesn't answer our question.

Why, John, have you not gone in?

What if it's a plot by Scribes and Pharisees
to winkle out those nuisance followers
of the One who called himself a king?

Yes, they're in there now,
hiding behind the door,
ready to leap out.

There!

Didn't that cloth move?

Caiaphas the High Priest
is hiding underneath,
isn't he?

If John goes in,
he'll be nailed to a cross himself,
won't he?

[PAUSE]

Well, if they were going to jump out
then they'd have done so by now,
wouldn't they?

Besides, that cloth is only moving
in the early morning breeze.

What if they've done something nasty to Him?

Let's not think about that.

They hated Him
surely crucifying Him was enough!

Surely
they got all their hatred out of their system
jeering at Him,
mocking Him,
and laughing at His pain.

What if there's a thief in there?

What if there's a madman inthere,
or a murderer,
or a ghost?

What if...

WATCH OUT!

Step back!

Peter is barging past John,
straight into the tomb,
no messing about.

There's nothing in here;
it's empty.

All that fuss and it's empty!

Just a cave in a rock
with some strips of cloth lying about.

He is not here.

Surely Peter,
you must remember what He said to you.

Have you forgotten that
He said He would die and be raised again
on the third day?

Have you forgotten
how you told Him off for saying such horrible things,
and how He shut you up in no uncertain terms?

But no,
Peter's mind is clouded with guilt,
and the rocky walls of the tomb
taunt him with the phrase:
"Oh no! You never knew the man!"

Can you still hear Peter's denials
echoing in this chamber?

[PAUSE]

John joins him,
and finally,
finally believes Mary's story.

Mary was right.

The mad woman speaks
the sanest sanity of them all.

The tomb is empty,
except for a thousand bad memories
and a thousand fears
that hide in the shadows.

Peter and John leave,
their world spinning around them,
tormented by guilt and fear,
and now confusion
and half-remembering,
back to the other disciples.

"What do we tell them, Peter?"

"That He's gone, they've taken Him away!"

"But Peter, isn't it strange
that someone would steal His body,
but take the trouble to fold up the napkin
that was on His head
and place it somewhere else in the tomb?"

As you walk with them,
what do you say to them?

Back they go to join the others,
their guilt and fear going with them.

Watch them go into the darkness,
though isn't it a little lighter now?

[PAUSE]

And then there's Mary.

A long weekend made longer
her heart as dark as the sky on that Good Friday,
the meaning of her life destroyed.

Her eyes have not been a stranger
to tears in the past few days,
and this is more than her heart can bear.

She falls to her knees
and that loving heart of hers breaks.

What could you say to her that would make a difference,
that would stop those agonised tears?

She cries so hard
that she almost misses the angels
sitting patiently in the tomb.

"Madam, why are you weeping?"

She cries so hard that she thinks
she sees the gardener
but her tears blur the man's face,
her sobs his voice.

"Oh sir,
if you don't want His body,
let me take it away out of your hands
so that it doesn't bother you any more."

It is just one word that changes everything,
simply her name being called.

But that voice that speaks that one word
is the voice that dries tears,
the voice that dispels fear,
the voice that alleviates guilt,
the voice that she has loved
since it cast away
the darkness of her mind.

"Oh, my Master!"

[PAUSE]

It is no longer dark;
the brilliant flash of the new day's Sun
sheds its light on the garden,
and the previous days' events
can be seen for what they are.

Their shadows melt in the cool rays of morning,
as we watch Mary skittering out of the garden again
with a wonderful story to tell.

Here is Jerusalem at dawn
on the first day of the week,
the tomb just a hole in the rock,
the cross just a lump of bloodstained wood,
the Scribes and the Pharisees just men asleep in bed,
in the darkness of their hearts.

A walk to Emmaus begins
disciples gather in a locked room
a new life for Humanity dawns.

A new day!

[PAUSE]

This is the day that the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it.

The Catholic Church and its relationship with the Holy See

Albion's Anglican Continuum blog has a wonderful article about the Holy See and its relationship with other Catholic Churches. It really is worth a look.

"I'm spiritual, but not religious"

I received today a very interesting comment on my Obscene Posting.

W,

Just before I read your post I was writing about the idea of being
"spiritual, but not religious." I see an unthoughtful, inherent neo-gnosticism in such a sentiment. Do you think that the elevation of "spirituality" over religion has anything to do with our denigration of things physical?

Jason Kranzusch

I felt that this deserved an entry on the main blog, so here it is.

It is my belief that what people mean by the statement, "I'm spiritual, but not religious," is usually "I crave some kind of deep fulfilment beyond the reach of my physical life but I refuse to be bound by any commitment to an established belief which threatens my own way of thinking." If I'm wrong, then please correct me.

This belief manifests itself mainly in the picking and mixing elements of various religions, a bit of Buddhist meditation together with a smattering of the Rosary and a dash of Dervish dancing, despite the fact that these religions teach very different things. And why is it that people who are spiritual but not religious (SBNR for short, I think) always attach themselves to old established expressions of spirituality, instead of inventing their own? I suppose that they see the spirituality that they crave manifested in a particular activity which they then adopt, being careful not to adopt any belief which is incompatible with their own thought.

Now that, as Jason says, is Gnosticism since many SBNRs will be looking mainly for an escape from the physical world (a salvation if you will) through a certain knowledge and practice, and hence involves the notional separation of the spirit from the body "spirit-good, body-bad", though I wonder how SBNRs would have fared in a Decian-style persecution. Are they willing to die for their beliefs?

However, just what is the spirituality that an SBNR seeks? It can only be a spirituality of the self, since the spirituality is put together by the self from elements that appeal to the self. In these matters, the spirituality is largely an aesthetic commodity that seeks to lift the soul from the consideration of things physical and yet is based only upon what gives the best spiritual high in life. Now, this doesn't stop the SBNR from possessing some wonderful altruistic properties.

Many SBNRs are fond of the idea of Karma, which drives them to demonstrate proper acts of respect and consideration of others. But still, the adoption of Karma apart from Buddhism and Hinduism, is the adoption of something that feels right, but there is still the refusal to commit wholeheartedly to being a Buddhist, or a Hindu.

It's the refusal to commit to anything which punctuates SBNR belief, and why this belief is largely self-justifying, self-orienting, and self-obsessed. It's a belief that cannot be shared with others; there is no koinonia, communion, or coherence, so this cannot be a belief that is truly societal. In some sense, an SBNR ought to regard Satre's "l'Enfers, c'est les autres" as being very true, for it is the existence of others that threatens the sheer individuality of SBNR belief. Since we live in a society, and have to live in a society, we can only conclude that SBNR belief, along with the great modern doctrine of Individualism, is not for the good of society. Indeed, Individualism and synchretism (essentially the method of compiling SBNR belief) have been great concerns of Pope Benedict.

We are human beings, body, mind and spirit (or body and spirit for dichotomists) and to ignore a part of our make up is a great mistake, for we ignore part of who we are and how healthy we are. Since we are truly unable to see who we really are, we have to rely on others' interactions. I can't tell how healthy my teeth are, I need someone (a dentist) to look into my mouth and tell me if there's anything wrong. If I refuse to see a dentist and declare everything to be okay, despite a niggling pain in my tooth, then it's me I'm hurting ultimately, and needlessly. Likewise, in order to know that my eyes are healthy, i need an optician, an other to help me.

We will only find true fulfilment by committing to beliefs in which other people form a vitally important part in sharing in that commitment. This commitment will involve difficulty, wrestling, searching, and much discomfort, conforming to rules, and praxes of that society, but can only contribute to our growth as human beings. However, such a commitment will constitute a religion, and the SBNRs will not like that.

An Obscene Posting.

Does it strike anyone as odd that all of our swear words and cuss words are mainly refer to sex or bodily functions?

It seems really silly to me, because the human body is so beautifully engineered, wired, plumbed and supported. It takes so many thousands of pounds and a lot of scientific hard grafting to recreate just the simplest of human movement like a walk or a run in the laboratory. And yet we constantly degrade it by viewing it as a disgusting object.

The very act of bringing a new human being into the world, working one of God's most brilliant miracles, is regarded as something to be laughed at, or regarded as obscene. It shouldn't. But then that doesn't mean that I want to see instances of what is the most private act emblazoned upon every screen. The cheapening of this act by society is certainly an obscenity.

Well, yes, there are some bodily functions which are not all that pleasant, and yet they still have a certain potentiality about them - the potential to bring forth more life. I'm aware that you won't appreciate me waxing lyrical about things best not mentioned, but the question remains: Why do we prefer to mention killing, murder, rape, oppression to that which we regularly flush away, or do naturally. Why don't we regard "I'll kill him" as the most grotesque of obscenities? Why don't we turn away from the word "war" in disgust?

It seems that our expletives are evidence of how little we think of ourselves, others, and ultimately God. The Psalmist says:

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

Every bodily action is worthy of wonderment, from the complexity of digestion, to the blink of an eye.

And then, thanks to Fr Basil Matthews, I think of the blessed body of the Saviour in which not only did all these actions take place as they do in us, but they all took place in the full, sinless service of God, even the ones we daren't mention because they are embarrassing. When he was tiny, Our Saviour's dirty nappies praised God and were done in full service of the Divine Will. We don't like thinking about that, but it's true, because Our Lord is that wonderful "amalgamation" (for want of a better word) of Humanity with Divinity.

I suppose I'd like to live in a world in which the mechanisms of the human body are treated with more respect than the shameful acts that the human will invisages. Do you think this is possible?

Care of the Community

Finding Sanctuary is a helpful little book by Fr Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth Abbey. (I keep wanting to say Abbot of Fort Worth, but that wouldn't be right, or would it...?)

Of course, one of the big cruces of Benedictine theology is the importance of Community. Community is regarded as rather negatively in modern society. We want to be independent, have everything our own way, do what we want. Well, the horrors in the Middle East prove one thing, this sort of attitude is destructive. It pulls people apart.

I look around my own parish, and I do see a Community. It's usually a community of teenagers in baseball caps, hoodies and tracksuit bottoms in procession around the streets preaching gospels of abuse at the different and vulnerable, tearing apart public edifices and waging war against my own little parish church.

It's interesting that they hate vulnerability so much, that it actually drives their community to stick together. An individual is vulnerable, a pack is not. And now we've moved, from human behaviour into the behaviour of wolves or chimps. If the leader shows weakness, he is torn from his throne and replaced by a stronger. See a group of chimps tear apart a colobos monkey, and now compare with the actions of a mob. Maybe Quatermass and the Pit had it right all along.

These communites are generated by a lust for power over the members, and to be honest, they are very stable up to a point - vide the Roman Empire. but notice how there is no stability for the individual: they cannot rely on anyone but themselves for fear that their position in the Community will be usurped.

And now we see Our Lord's prescription for His followers:- take up the least positions in the society ruled by men. Although you are treated like garbage, no-one will covet your position. The lowest of the low can always trust each other, provided that they are not consumed with gaining power.

So we are faced with two positions: face the world as an individual, or become part of a fear and power-driven community. which would you choose.

No, there is a third. We look to each other, see the needs of others; search out the vulnerable and provide them with protection and stability. It's genius! Through commitment, we gain stability, trust, even peace of mind. We can get on with enjoying life knowing that we are safe. Of course, being human, there will be ructions, and plenty of ructions happen in religious communities. The thing is, if the Rule is obeyed correctly, sheer honesty about the ructions provides the means to solving them. It's only greed for control over others that stops us from living like this.

The Lord wasn't just a pretty face, now was He?

Needling Christians

I had one of my "visions" while at Elmore. Not, one of the great ecstasies of St Hildegard of Bingen, or, I hope, the ravings of a religious nut, but just a thought that occurred to me as I looked at the sign post to Speen and mused upon the meaning of conversatio mores.

I saw a landscape rather like the bell of a trumpet or a tuba, only in darkness. Above the central abyss shone the light of Christ and around it were Christians represented by compasses who were pointing to that Light. However there seemed to me to be only one path from the ground of the landscape to the Light, all other routes would lead into the dark depths of the abyss beneath. I am sure that the compasses represented the Christians inclination to Christ, but that their position around the abyss meant that if they followed the direction from that position, they would fall into the abyss still pointing Christwards.

It doesn't do just to be magnetised to Christ. We need to be where He wants us to be in order to progress to Him.

Elmore Abbey

Well, my week on retreat is up, and I'm now back from an oasis of holiness to my usual little den of iniquity.

Seriously, though. For those of you who don't know, Elmore Abbey is the latest reincarnation (or regeneration for you fans of Doctor Who) of what was Pershore and Nashdom Abbeys. I've gained an awful lot during my visit here and so will anybody who pays a visit.

There's a worry though. The Abbot left recently to embark upon a new phase in his vocation is San Francisco, leaving 5 monks behind. This is too small a number to be lead by an Abbot, and so they are now under the auspices of their conventual prior, Dom Simon. Of these five, Dom Kenneth and Brother Hugh are, quite frankly, feeling the ravages of Time, though remain utterly committed to their profession. Despite the arrival of Brother Gordon and over 300 Oblates, the remaining 4 more able-bodied monks are struggling to keep their Abbey in order as well as maintain their commitment to the Benedictine Opus Dei (i.e. the Divine Office, not the Roman Catholic Organisation).

The world needs places like Elmore, more than ever in a society that is against the idea of community other than a means to gain social power and standing. These monasteries around the world, committed to the timeless Rules of Life and Faith according to the most influential Christians of the past, are our beacons to the Christian way of living in peace, in love and holiness. If Elmore were to fail, then a light would go out in England which would mark a terrible depth to which the spiritual health of this nation has fallen.

I do ask that you would pray sincerely with me for the wonderful Brothers of Elmore, and that they may be given strength and new members to continue their arduous and assiduous task.

A good reason why I shouldn't ever, ever be given a pen.

The Poetreader

Not one of my better doodles. It's supposed to be my friend Ed Pacht from the Anglican Continuum blog. I've done better than this but he's usually being chased by ravening wolf-spiders and vampires. Says a lot about our friendship doesn't it?

A Hell of a Time.

The other day I was on prayer ministry duty in Church with my fellow prayer-worker and to fill the gap between praying and waiting for nobody to turn, our conversation turned to the topic of Hell. Of course I was a little uncomfortable:
Hell seems the last thing that any Christian wants to get talking about, after all, Hell is the place that most people want to avoid.

I was telling her about how Hell was created out of the sheer love that God has for his children. I think we all know that we expect love to respect the object's free-will, and if we choose not to love God then, out of respect for that choice, God withdraws His "encounterable" self. The place where God will not be encountered is Hell. It's a place where He stands outside watching, and perhaps weeping, so that those who have made their choice may live the effects of that choice for Eternity.

The images in the Bible paint a picture of Hell being a place of fire and torment. Personally, I'd actually expected Hell to be ice cold, a place with no warmth, no light, and certainly no love, but then I got to thinking about what Hell-fire really is, and my thought is hardly original!

It's hunger. All beings have a hunger for God, and human beings in particular do so since we possess the image of God. We hunger after meaning in our life, self-definition, some sort of understanding of who we really are. While not all of us indulge in the pursuit of philosophy, all of us wonder at some point about the monotony of life, of the emptiness of human endeavour, the aimless meandering on this terrestrial ball. The Book of Ecclesiastes paints a picture of this sort of life - a life without God.

What saddens me is that I see so much of the elements of Hell in today's society. So many people seek to fill the emptiness of the soul with all kinds of pointless and meaningless behaviour. Actually, any behaviour can become pointless and meaningless when directed toward the self. Human beings require more than just the self. One can look at the media to see its preoccupation with sex and power and money.

The dogged pursuit of any of these is meaningless. Think what would happen if you had the power over everything in your grasp, if you had all the wealth and had slept with all the people you wanted. What then?

In God's Debris, Scott Adams suggests that the only challenge that God faces is that of destroying Himself, of tearing Himself to pieces, there is absolutely nothing else for Him to do. The thing is, that this is precisely what any finite creature would do if they were suddenly to find themselves with omnipotence a la Bruce Almighty. In Hell, where God is not, its inhabitants will be omnipotent: finite beings with all the power they need, but no challenge, no original thought, nothing left to do, the same-old same-old. You only have to look at the gangs of bored teenagers who, with nothing better to do, go rampaging on the streets. What if these poor creatures had nothing to do for all Eternity?

It certainly frightens me, and I hope that it frightens you. The only way to fill the emptiness of our being is to fill it from an eternal source - The Eternal Source, the Stream of Living Water which gives such refreshment and renewal. Now here is where we can turn our vision of Hell around and start to see the beginnings of the vision of Heaven. On Thursday, I go off on a retreat to Elmore Abbey in Newbury. Following the Traditional Benedictine Offices, these committed and venerable Christians say the same Offices, week in, week out, the same words, the same tunes, the same liturgy. While there are times when these seem samey, each of the Brothers senses a renewal, a freshness that comes from the same scripture. By confronting the monotony of life, each Brother sees deeper into his reality, and catches a glimpse of God's reality, despite the fact that nothing changes.

The only way to avoid Hell is to go to the Spring of Living water, where the unbearable emptiness of being is filled with Light.

So apart from the encounterable presence of God, what is the difference between Heaven and Hell?

Painting the Invisible King.

This may be a little difficult for those not indigenous to the U.K., though I'm sure similar problems and solutions have been argued about wherever you are. In order to control speeding offences, the British Government decided to introduce speed cameras to photograph cars that are travelling at illegal speeds. Initially they were meant to be hidden but, at the response of angry motorists, they were moved into open view and painted orange. In Blighty, there was a large debate as to whether this defeated the object. For Swanscombe, however, I was inspired to preach this.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul's Church, Swanscombe on the Sunday next before Advent 2005, based on St Matthew xxv.31-46.

At the bottom of the hill
the speed camera stands
at the beginning of a sharp bend.

Its once muddy grey colour
has recently been changed
to the garish orange
of an embarrassed satsuma.

Daniel breathes a sigh of relief.

When the speed camera
was that invisible grey colour,
and half-hidden in the trees,
he would often get flashed
as he zoomed past.

It has cost him a fortune in fines.

But no more!

He now knows
when to slow down in his car,
and when to speed up again.

No more fines!

[PAUSE]

Sonya is happy too.

On too many occasions,
she has nearly collided with a car
speeding in the other direction,
even though she was keeping
to the 30 mph limit.

On the whole,
the number of accidents
has decreased since
the speed camera was painted orange.

Are speed cameras a good way
of reducing the number of drivers
speeding on the roads?

Daniel thinks they are
a cynical Government ploy
to claw back yet more money
from the motorist.

Do you think that speed cameras
should be made visible,
or kept invisible?

Whatever your thoughts may be,
one fact remains:
at the very least,
drivers do slow down when they drive past it.

This does mean that
Daniel does not knock anyone over
or collide with anyone
round this dangerous bend in the road.

Does this alter your views?

[PAUSE]

Crash!

The seventh seal is broken;
the seventh trumpet sounds;
the stars fall from the skies.

St John the Divine
looks exceedingly smug
that the Day of Judgment
is taking place
just as he said it would
in the last book of the Bible
- the Apocalypse.

Like everyone else,
you stand before the shining figure
sat upon the throne
in His resplendent glory.

His eyes are fixed upon yours
as He makes His decision.

Are you a sheep or a goat?

Do you go to His right hand
and life for all Eternity,
or to His left hand
and to a place that is rather hot?

Well, really that's between you and God.

But when you put yourself
into the picture in the Gospel,
then that very question awaits us all:
are you a sheep or a goat?

And it's a question that none of us can escape!

Jesus is showing us
that the answer is very clear cut.

Those who feed the hungry,
clothe the naked,
give drink to the thirsty,
shelter the stranger,
go upstairs.

Those who don't, go downstairs and smolder.

The Ancient of Days says to each of us in turn:

"Whatever you did
for the least of My brethren,
you did it for Me.

Whatever you failed to do
for the least of My brethren,
you failed to do it for Me."

[PAUSE]

A shout goes up
from a departing goat
destined for the Pit:

"No fair!

You should have been visible.

We'd have treated you
with some respect
if you'd been visible."

What do you think
as you stand before God?

Has he played fair
in remaining invisible?

[PAUSE]

What possible reason
does Our Lord have
for hiding His glory from us?

Surely we all want to see Him as He is,
in all His majesty?

Wouldn't it make it easier
for us to worship a visible God?

The answer to this isn't hard.

Until we are made perfect,
the full glory of His Majesty
would destroy us.

Remember, Moses on the mountain
is only permitted to see God's back
as He passes by.

Good though he is,
Moses isn't perfect,
he cannot see God and live.

But God has walked among us
- Jesus Christ -
and He didn't dazzle us
when He showed Himself
to us 2000 years ago.

Why hasn't He stayed with us as a visible king?

Then, when we see Him coming
we will know to
- help the poor,
- feed the hungry,
- clothe the naked,
- take care of the stranger.

At least then, all thos needy people
would get help.

Isn't that what God wants?

All the ills of the world cured
in one fell swoop!

If only He'd be here
then we'd know what
we're supposed to be doing.

[PAUSE]

If we think like that,
then we miss the point.

Do we really want
to paing god orange like the speed camera,
so that when we see Him coming,
we suddenly start paying attention
to the Big Issue seller,
or the starving refugee,
or the people standing
on street corners rattling tins,
all who are usually ignored?

St Theresa of Calcutta
- Mother Theresa-
says that
looking into the faces
of her little children
was like looking into the face of Christ.

"First we meditate on Jesus...
and then we go out
and look for Him in disguise."

She sees the invisible King.

She doesn't need orange paint.

For her, Christ is suddenly made visible,
His glory shining forth
from the faces of little children
needing a mother.

For her, the begging bowl
becomes the golden cup
helpd by the King.

For her,
the rags of a vagrant
become the sumptuous gowns
of golden raiment worn
by the One
Who sits on the Throne.

[PAUSE]

We acknowledge
the Kingship of Christ each Sunday.

We bow reverently at the altar
to recognise Christ.

We likewise bow or genuflect
at the Aumbry
to recognise Christ.

We sing "Hosanna in the Highest"
which loosely means
"Save us, Holy King."

For us in Church,
we have all these things
to remind us
of the invisible King with us.

But how will we recognise
the Invisible King in our week ahead?

Do we need some orange paint?

A doodle. 

Fire Extinguishers and Tea-Trays.

My first sermon at a church I've been familiar with for years.
It's amazing how each church has a natural rhythm for preaching, and I don't think this one really fitted that rhythm too well. Still, it made the point I hope.


Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Church, Dartford on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Sunday 6th August 2006 based on St Luke ix.28-36.

The phone rings.

Professor Pangnosis
of the University Theology faculty
answers it to a warm invitation
from the physics faculty
to see the new experiment
conducted by Professor Dold.

"We think you will find this rather interesting."

Accepting the invitation gracefully,
Professor Pangnosis moves
from his comfortable wood-panelled room
covered in bookshelves
to the plexi-glass and white-walled
surroundings of the physics department
and its vague odour
of burning rubber.

He is shown into a large room
with a complicated mechanism
occupying the far wall.

Professor Dold shakes him eagerly by the hand
and shows him a seat
- not the comfortable armchair
that he’s used to,
but a grimy metal-and-fabric chair.

"Okay, Clarissa, are you ready?"
Clarissa,
Professor Dold’s assistant,
gingerly climbs into the apparatus
and clings on to two handles.

Professor Dold
types something into the computer,
turns a dial and flips a switch,
and the machine suddenly comes to life.

As the Professors and other research folk watch,
the appearance of Clarissa’s face alters,
and her clothes become dazzling white.

Beside her,
two ghostly forms appear
in the same dazzling whiteness.

The whine of the machine changes pitch
and the motor starts to slow down.

The ghosts disappear
and Clarissa returns to normal.

[PAUSE]

"Well, Pangnosis,
you’ve seen that we’ve replicated
the Transfiguration of Christ in the Laboratory
and shown it to be a certain form
of St Elmo’s fire in which the subject
is reflected twice
producing those two ghosts,
rather like a bad
television picture.

I guess this explains it all away."

"Indeed," says Pangnosis,
"you have replicated
the transfiguration of a human being
in accordance with the description
in the Gospels.

The only things missing
are the cloud and the voice of God."

"Ah, well these are easily explained
as the low-lying thunderclouds
common to a mountain,
which would be necessary
to produce the St Elmo’s fire,"
says Dold,
"If you want,
we can easily replicate that
by setting off a couple of fire extinguishers,
and I’ll rattle a tea-tray for the thunder."

Professor Pangnosis sits silently a while.
"I have two questions,"
he says finally,
"My first is:
how do you know that the Transfiguration of
Christ happened exactly like this?

[PAUSE]

Professor Dold is irritated by Pangnosis' question.

"But don’t you see, Pangnosis?

We’ve explained that
the Transfiguration can occur quite naturally:
there is no longer any mystery
about how this was done."

"But it doesn’t answer my first question,
Professor Dold.

I certainly agree with you that,
according to St Luke,
you have replicated something extraordinary.

And St Luke is the perfect man
to use to build your device:
he is a scientist.

See how he writes the account scientifically
- all facts, no dressing up with drama
or unnecessary emotion.

Francis Ford Coppola would be throwing a fit
trying to direct this according to St Luke’s account.

But my question still stands.

How do you know that this is
precisely how the Transfiguration occurred?

Were you there when it happened?"

"I believe that it’s the most likely explanation," says Dold.

"Ah, then you don’t know for sure," says Pangnosis.

"This brings me on to my second question:
what’s the point of all this?

What have you got out of your experiment
that Peter, James and John haven’t?"

[PAUSE]

Professor Dold has missed
a vital part of the experiment.

Do you remember
that he did not fulfil all the elements
of the account of the Transfiguration?

If you remember,
he misses out the cloud
that descends and throws
Peter, James and John into a blind panic.

Although Professor Dold
dismisses the cloud,
he is actually dismissing
the big part of the situation.

What is the point of the Transfiguration?

[PAUSE]

Along with Peter and James and John,
we stand on the mountainside
and see something quite wonderful.

Jesus’ appearance changes,
Dazzling bright,
he’s met by Moses and Elijah.

The veil between this world,
the reality that we observe around us
and the universe that is usually
beyond our observation,
that veil becomes transparent
and both natures of Jesus,
the human and Divine
become visible at the same time.

Infinity breaks through into a finite world.

And then the cloud comes down
and takes it all away from us.

Does that bother you?

Most Modern Scientists look
to prove conclusively either way
whether God exists
without realising that getting close to God
necessarily means getting into the cloud.
Once in the cloud, we can see nothing.

Science is useless in the cloud
because all its instruments get fogged up
its RADAR snags
and its Infra-red gets clouded
and obscured
and so Science has to make guesses.


Of course,
in Science,
they are not called guesses,
they are called theories.

In America,
the Big Bang theory is in constant battle
with the idea that the world was created
on a dark October morning in 4004 BC.

Both are theories,
and indeed many of us believe
that the Big Bang theory is most plausible,
but unless we were standing next to God
when Creation began,
we cannot know for sure
whether either theory is true.

All that we Christians do know for sure
is that somehow
God created the heavens and the earth.

[PAUSE]
However,
as Christians,
we seek something more nourishing
than explanations.

We seek God,
and to gain God is to gain love
and to gain love is to gain God.

St Paul reminds us that
"knowledge puffs up, love builds up."

What does this say
to people with doctorates?

What Professor Dold has is a machine
that can change a person’s appearance,
only offering a partial explanation
for what could have happened.

Peter, James and John,
in experiencing the Transfiguration
are left without any understanding
of what has actually happened,
but they have met more deeply with God.

Who has gained more from the Transfiguration?

Professor Dold, or the disciples?

[PAUSE]


If we truly wish to come close to God,
then we must come into the cloud
where we can be sure that
we will know nothing
save that the Lord is present in love.

If we are to receive
Communion with God in this Mass then,
as we walk up to the altar,
we too must be enveloped in that
cloud of unknowing.

Any liturgy,
or sermon,
or prayer
which offers us an understanding
of what is going on
can only take us further away
from the cloud,
and from a deeper experience
of God in our Eucharist.

[PAUSE]

We live in a world in which facts are important,
and in which Science seeks
further understanding of the Universe around us.

But Christians
believe in an existence beyond science,
beyond test-tubes,
televisions
and tea-trays.

We believe in a God
whose existence is unprovable.

Indeed,
if it were provable
by human means,
He wouldn’t really be God.

How much do you really want
to understand about God, anyway?

Will building a machine help you?

Hic est calix

A meditation on the role of the Chalice in the Eucharist by my friend, Ed Pacht, on the Continuum blog.

Had to include this...

How could I not link to this?