Churches as Monasteries; Parishioners as 21st Century Religious?

I started this late last night but the technology conspired to tell me to wait, rest as best I could and finish later. As a contextual note, temporally this post surrounds the passing of my father, spiritually his passing surrounds the granting of the image above. I felt I needed to capture it because though yet undeveloped I felt it strongly connected to a call to the ordained priesthood finally arising from the sea of possibilities. As they say: discerning good from good is far more difficult than discerning good from bad.

Last night, once I knew we were only hours away from his transition, a liminal space was created in my vigil for him. Though far away in distance, the part of him that is in me really seemed to give me some clear perspective as only moments like these can. In a final period of quiet reading before bed, I picked Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" off my shelf as I had been diverted from reading this series some time ago. This paragraph in particular struck me in relation to the spiritual but not religious crowd and the role of churches:

Because of this spiritual poverty all around, this lack of interest in dealing with what matters most to us--a lack in our schools, our jobs and vocations, and our places of worship alike--'spirituality,' to use the generic term for it, has escaped institutional structures and is now more or less free-floating. Spirituality is 'in the air.' The good thing in all this is that the deepest and most characteristic aspects of life are now common concerns: hunger and thirst for what is lasting and eternal is widely acknowledged and openly expressed; refusal to be reduced to our job descriptions and test results is pervasive and determined. The difficulty, though, is that everyone is more or less invited to make up a spirituality that suits herself or himself. Out of the grab bag of celebrity anecdotes, media gurus, fragments of ecstasy, and personal fantasies, far too many of us, with the best intentions in the world, because we have been left to do it 'on our own,' assemble spiritual identities and ways of life that are conspicuously prone to addictions, broken relationships, isolation, and violence.

I think a lot of the concern lately among churches (even those within the emergent stream) is how to get the genie back in the bottle so to speak. It just doesn't go that way. That is not necessarily a bad thing. With cooperation, this situation could actually become Joachim di Fiori's "Age of the Holy Spirit".

That is not to say that we don't need to undertake the work that Rev. Peterson is setting out to discuss. We do need to clear the decks and get at the heart of our traditions to inspire each other towards becoming the child of God that we already are.

Given that spirituality is not going to be reinstitutionalized, what is the contribution of institutions? This is where the image in the title of the post came to me. With a very different baseline in the surrounding society, Christians become the countercultural minority our best self often shows.

With no societal pressure to be a part of churches, the people of those communities become like monastics keeping a rule of life (the Baptismal Covent for Episcopalians) in an environment of attentive listening (i.e. obedience) to each other and the ordered clerics that serve to coach them in their call to ministry. Even without a practice of the daily office, the discipline of Sunday services when society is free to sleep in is a witness to a way of connecting to God.

These communities allow for gradual belonging as a permeable set centered on Christ. They connect with their neighbors in a variety of ways. They are places of hospitality for those seeking a connection with God in keeping the liturgy, the work of the people, going so that it is available as a bridge to the divine. The radical ethics of Jesus inform the choices made in the daily living of the lives of God's people.

As the leaven in the loaf of the world, we let our prayers and compassion reach to God, soak into us, and reach out through us to change the whole. One of my Benedictine brothers describes monasteries as grace factories. May our churches of whatever variety, however large, and however numerous be that light for the world.

Mentoring Christians towards that type of engagement is a vocation to which I would happily give the rest of my life.

I thank my father, deacon and elder of the Presbyterian Church, lover of God, Neighbor, and Self, for clearing away my mental and emotional clutter on his way out of this life and into the next. He does not leave this world unchanged. Many blessings upon his soul: freed now from physical struggle and in the Peace of God. Amen.

A peace settles in

In the midst of an academy weekend, I settle in for the evening amidst books, music and some new furniture that rounds out the reading room of my living room: more shelves to give some space to breathe and a foot companion to last years armstool. Funny story about the armchair is that I picked it up last year's retreat to Guadalupe Abbey in Lafayette. Only about a month later did I realize that the chair, lamp and other rearrangements gave me a space that replicated my situation in the abbey guest quarters.

Tonight I am looking into the life of St. Malachy of Ireland. In addition to some interesting prophesies that I knew about previously, as it turns out he was an almost exact contemporary of St. Bernard and brought Cistercian practice to Ireland. I picked it up yesterday in Reed's library while looking for a book on Francis Xavier for my second homily assignment. I couldn't resist it and now I am really glad I followed through on the urge. The difference of perspective of Cluniac and Cistercian monks was the subject of my reflection paper this week, which was the primary purpose of my visit to Reed last night. i needed the space and time set aside to produce it. I am finding that I work really well there.

Tonight though, is not production but quiet reflection. Other matters on the table before final lights out are Prayer Book evolution as I now have copies of the 1662 English standard and the 1928 American to go along with my Oxford Guide to the subject.

So many fascinating nooks and crannies within this faith that in principle can be so simple (if not easy). In the midst of all this complexity is a hunger for the sacred and for mystery. My historical studies this term with the academy have stirred up a consciousness of this cloud of witnesses. As our chaplain reminded me this evening, it is this cloud with whom we pray the office even when we are alone.

May the blessings of peace be with you this night.

A new milestone

So my birthday just passed. Two years ago I spend my birthday evening in the "Introduction to Benedictine Practice" class prior to joining my community. Last year I was in a mini-retreat at Guadalupe Trappist Abbey from the day before to the day after my birthday. This year I spent it at the Academy. In addition to turning in a pile of written work, I delivered my first sermon and survived.

Just for fun, here is the text:

Sometimes once you notice something you start seeing it everywhere. That’s how I feel about this evening’s Psalm over the past couple weeks. As I started thinking about preaching for the first time, I remembered my church growing up. We used the final verse of this Psalm as a responsive prayer in preparation for the Sunday sermon. I had considered using it here even before I knew that we would already be praying it together. I wasn’t even sure which psalm that verse came from. It cropped up again about a week ago in my Benedictine small group. That week’s leader had chosen it as our opening prayer and we reveled in its expansive language. I was pleased both to run into the verse that I had in mind and to see the beauty of its original context. And so as I begin, I feel blessed that this scripture from my early formation has shown up to greet me in a new phase of formation.

Tonight, we are honoring the life and work of Richard Hooker: an Anglican apologist born in the decade following the printing of the first Book of Common Prayer. He would devote an entire volume of his primary work, “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” to defending the Prayer book and its style of worship against the claims of the Puritans. As is generally the case with great works, this undertaking has roots earlier in our scholar’s life. Richard Hooker was Master of Temple Church in London from 1585 to 1591. The unusual title for his position as rector comes from the church’s origin as the English headquarters for the Knights Templar. Needless to say, the Knights hit an extremely bad run of luck and their space became the spiritual home to others. In Hooker’s time, it was primarily home to lawyers, judges and future hopefuls in that field. It was also home to those of a more reform and even puritanically minded Christianity. Hooker’s traditionally oriented Mastership was balanced by a Puritan named Walter Travers, who was nominally Hooker’s assistant, but was in reality a bit of an opponent and theologian in his own right. He held the title of Reader of the Temple. While the Master was in charge, it was the Reader who generally set the theological teaching and tone. Naturally they didn’t see eye to eye. From what I could find it does not seem that Hooker had a particularly great effect on his flock’s opinions at the time, though Travers was eventually censured for annoying the Archbishop one too many times.

It is not surprising then, when away from London in a less demanding post that he should take up the question once again. Five volumes of “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” were published in his lifetime and three more after his untimely death from a winter chill. However, the compelling thing to me is that he was not trying to defeat either the Catholic position or that of the Puritans. In some ways, he was really playing for a draw. He began by demonstrating the very small kernel of doctrine necessary for salvation. He showed that not even the creeds are based on the scriptures alone but by our reason applied to them. They represent a developing tradition of inquiry upon the revelation of Christ’s life and teachings. Some even point to this argument as the origin of our “Anglican Three-Legged Stool” of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. What his line of reasoning did show is how Christians are connected on the most fundamental level and that much of the rest can come or go without anyone risking their salvation. All he wanted to demonstrate was that the Church of England was a suitable vehicle for the mystery of Christ. Indeed one of his complaints against the Puritans was that they were pushing too hard on the mystery and trying to sharpen edges that were meant to be a bit blurry. There is a beautiful line from his Laws which speaks to this: “Oh, that men would more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how.”

This tendency to avoid the sharp edges and hard extremes is an important characteristic of Anglicanism. It is driven not by a sense of avoidance, at least not on our good days, but rather by seeking unity. One of my favorite snippets of prayer from our liturgy is the beginning of Form III of the Prayers of the People: “Father, we pray for your Holy Catholic Church; that we all may be one”. I feel that Richard Hooker was praying that prayer too, the one we take from today’s gospel reading.

Today we hear Jesus’ prayer for us. He reaches beyond and through all the pages of history that we’ve been studying these past several weeks and reaches right into this gathering. The one we gather around prays this his disciples and all those in the great chain of followers that they initiate can hold things together that we might know the unity that he has experienced with God. We might be a little rough around the edges, a bit more fractured that perhaps one might wish, but if we believe with Richard Hooker that all we need is our connection to Christ to be Christian, than we can celebrate that connection and our Lord’s prayer reaching our ears this evening.

All of our struggles with understanding are perhaps the bulk of the Christian story we have been reading, but they are not the thread binding the book together. That honor goes to this unifying love Jesus prayed for us. And with this love might just come a sense of the wisdom that Paul points to in our reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians. It might be hiding out between the lines of this contentious story. Paul assures us that it is there, behind the competing claims of this world that will pass away. Where there is now a façade of struggle and argument, we might one day find wisdom holding us up like the Strength of the Lord, the Redeeming Rock, of our Psalm.

In spring for the past couple years I have attended a conference on the Emerging Church hosted by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. The first year the backdrop behind the speakers was a great tree representing the Christian tradition with its roots in Judaism and its branches spreading out into the various denominations that we know today. This symbol was a reminder for us that what can look fractured might indeed be the development of a living unity when looked at from a different angle. Jesus is the seed that brought forth this flourishing tree: one holy tree that we may be one in him as he was one with God. I offer up Richard Hooker this night as a careful and loving gardener that tended to our branch just as it was emerging from the limb that had carried it that far. Amen.



Feast of Richard Hooker

Psalm 19
1 Cor 6-10, 13-16
John 17:18-23



Background reading on Richard Hooker

Lee W. Gibbs, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English magisterial reformer? (Evanston, IL: Anglican Theological Review 84:4, 2002).

Robert K. Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1981).

“Richard Hooker,” http://www.parishes.oxford.anglican.org/draytonbeauchamp/richard_hooker.htm, downloaded on 10/29/2010.

October winds

How could it possibly be two weeks since my last post? October is moving incredibly quickly and my cup, through stable, nearly runneth over. Mostly I've been studying and having lots of meetings. I've been learning lots about lay ministry, the priesthood of the people of God, the evolution of structures in the first few centuries of the church, and several perspectives on homiletics. I've been spending some Saturdays in the library of my college which has been great. There is not a lot of competition on Saturday for space. It feels wide open and quiet in there. I can sit still and work much more effectively than at home even though I virtually live in a library. I'm very happy to be able to connect the Academy to Reed. One other of the twelve academy students is a Reedie which is a pretty high proportion when it comes down to it. I'm hoping that by reconnecting this way and doing my research there will abate the recurrent dreams I've always had about starting senior year over (or somehow getting a second degree there). I've always been disappointed with my performance senior year and have fairly consciously wished for a do over of sorts. In some ways that's what I have now: a new educational endeavor centered in theology like I've always wanted. I considered going to St. Andrews, Scotland for a Bachelor of Divinity three different times including straight out of high school. Course then I'd still be presbyterian, which though an important part of the body of Christ doesn't happen to be the part in which I am called to be. So all is for the best. I remain happily in Portland and find myself re-ensconced in the Reed Library, which incidentally is where I turned in 2003 to find books and give myself a crash course in what it meant to be an Episcopalian. Wheels within wheels as they say.

Autumnal blessings upon you!

The Double Spiral of the Life of the Spirit

Last week, I was fortunate to see two excellent speakers: Father William Meninger, a Cistercian who was one of the original teachers to return contemplative prayer to the Church, and David Abram: a highly creative cultural ecologist. In some ways they represent two of the deepest aspects of my spiritual life.

David Abram told us about the pervasiveness of the association of the words and concepts by which we express mind, wind, spirit, psyche. Mind, like the earth, is something that we are in. As Paul preached to the Athenians: God is "the one in whom we live and move and have our being." He also told us of the Navajo concept of Nilche' the Divine Wind that surrounds us as well as is in us. The wind without is connected as the wind within. The wind is invisible but leaves spiral traces all over, including our own bodies: tips of fingers and toes, ears (where the children of the wind speak to us as thoughts), and the brain itself.

All of this talk of connection prompted me to rescue the most recent material that I have been working with as part of my order of druids (OBOD). A few years ago they revised the course and also created an audio version to honor the oral natural of the Celtic tradition. It will be good to warm the embers of that fire.

The other side of the spiral brought a wonderful workshop and lecture from Father Meninger on the practice of the contemplative life. He illuminated thoughts from the Cloud of Unknowing, from Julian of Norwich, and other medieval gems of mysticism brought back to light and practice in the past sixty years or so. A deep well from which to nourish the church and all those working towards the kingdom.

As Christianity spread in Britain and Ireland, plenty of Druids became Monks, imparting Celtic Christianity and Anglicanism its distinct cultural flavor. This blending of the natural and the spiritual (as if those are separate anyway) is a rich tradition with a long history. Navigating my place in the flow of those spirals is a pleasure.

May be blessings of the King of the Elements be with you this night!

Good News People

So the new Diocesan Academy for Formation and Mission is well and truly off and running. I had thought to post some themes from our first weekend together, but for now I am going to let that gather some steam and put something different, though not altogether unrelated, on the table. This evening I picked up a half read report from the Church of England on the the work of Diocesan Evangelists. This role is definitely evolving but may become ever more useful as the Church and the World change. The term and the role have some heavy baggage and an inconsistency of example that makes it difficult to recognize. So appropriately enough, this report is called "Good News People: Recognizing Diocesan Evangelists" from Church House Publishing in 1999. Their findings are compelling:

We therefore came to understand the word 'evangelist' as describing someone, man or woman, lay or ordained:
*who goes where the church is not;
*who proclaims and lives the gospel: the way in which this 'proclamation' takes place is essentially contextual, and is by no means limited to preaching or even to verbal communication;
*who interprets the Church to the world and the world to the Church;
*who comes from the centre of the Church and feeds from its riches and is accountable to it as well as challenging it;
*who encourages the whole Church in its work of evangelism, not least by communicating the gospel to those inside as well as outside the Church.

In many ways, this is what I feel called to do, despite the fact it seems like the exact opposite of the natural inclinations of my personality. The life of a monastic does feel like my natural inclination. However, when I met with the abbot of my Benedictine community to discuss some of the possibilities surrounding my call and the education I was hoping to undertake (this was about two or three months before the plan for the Academy blessedly reached me: Good News indeed), she said that what she was hearing was a more active and world engaged life than is possible in the cloister.

We shall see. For now, the end of another day. Amen.

Shaking the Subjunctive

So. Though the new diocesan Academy for Formation and Mission's grand opening is a week from today, we had a bit of a soft opening last night at the home of our new professor. The Dean and Chaplain were on hand to lend their guidance as well. There are a whirlwind of possibilities that remain to be incarnated in our experience and practice, but we are indeed off and running.

The revised syllabus arrived today. There are three main assignments or points to consider at present. The homework itself is the first part of our text and the Book of Acts with a reflection paper. We are also working to consider how to be a praying community together in the time between our intensive weekends. The Dean warned us not to think of this as something that happens every two weeks, but that it is something that is a part of our lives every day. The Dean, another of the students and myself are all part of my Benedictine community. From what I know of the other members of our new academy community, they also are not strangers to fostering bonds of study, prayer, and community while balancing daily concerns. It is still slightly in the future, but I believe we will live into something life giving both to ourselves but also as a source of strength and inspiration that can be channelled into the situation of our lives and ministry.

The third item is to carefully consider the syllabus and to raise any questions and concerns before our first official meeting. In the words of our professor, It is to become a covenant between us and that bears dialog prior to accepting that responsibility. I find myself with one concern. It reads in part, particularly as concerning our research paper, as if we already know where we will end up. In fact the core of the research paper assignment is to delve into sources for the order of ministry to which we are called. Yikes. That is at least half of why I am here: to find the answer to that question. Which order of ministry (lay, deacon, or priest) best enables me "to do the work you have given us to do" (as we pray each week in the postcommunion prayer)?

I started writing this post as a way to get out all the things that I did not want to include in my official response. Because all I could think about were the myriad forms a life in ministry could take. I was hoping to avoid putting all that on the table as part of what my professor had to wade through to understand my concern. However, it looks like even the blog will be spared that morass of subjunctivity. A few sentences from the above paragraph, but a little bit of background concerning my understanding of how discernment was to be part of the work of the Academy. While this is definitely true in terms of as a proving ground, i.e. whether postulants go on to be candidates; I believe the Academy can be a powerful in moving Aspirants to their next stage of formation whether to a Postulant for Holy Orders or some other form of ministry. We would not part of this developing community if we were not apiring to something.

Once again this sounding board has done me a great service just by providing space to type and collect.

Blessings to the ethers of the internet and upon any who happen upon these words. May we all find our place in God's kingdom for there is work enough for us all to do. Amen.