The Convent of the Incarnation Fairacres, home to the Sisters of the Love of God

St Stephen's House Oxford the former monastery of the Society of St John the Evangelist.

Lent 4 (Year B) Spiritual Practices Rituals

 

Lent 4, Spiritual Practices ‘Rituals’

‘Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present’

(p101 Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices’)

There are places in the world that have a special resonance for me. One of those places is the city of Oxford in the Midlands of the United Kingdom where I lived for two academic years training for the priesthood in a former monastery located in the old working-class area of what is now a large industrial city worshipping in the monastic church of St John the Evangelist. I stayed in June last year at an Anglican monastery, the Sisters of the Love of God, an enclosed contemplative, an oasis of quiet and prayer. I am a Priest Associate of the Order. As always it was a joy to become part of the life of the community joining in the Daily Prayers from before dawn to dusk. Even mealtimes are a ritual activity, eaten in silence with a book read by one of the nuns. Every part of life forms a rhythm of word and silene.

One summer afternoon I walked into the city along the Iffley Road. With a new book from Blackwells and a coffee in the worlds oldest coffee houses I made my way to choral Evensong at Magdelen, the college of CS Lewis. In my day weekday choral evensong would have had a small congregation in addition to the chaplains and choir. To my surprise the chapel was packed for Choral Evensong sung most beautifully from the old 1662 Prayer Book.  It was an achingly beautiful gathering by candlelight but I could tell that most of the visitors were strangers to Christian worship. Yet in the prayers and the welcome the clergy did their best to reflect everyday concerns and the needs of the world and to pray for all with sensitivity

‘Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present’

In an anxious disenchanted world, many hunger for rituals. Visitors to a hospital chapel write requests for prayer and light candles in churches. UK Cathedrals are packed most Sundays with seekers. The sacred itself is often found by people in concerts and art galleries. Swifties on pilgrimage to Taylor Swift Concerts wear special wristbands and will hold up illuminated mobile phones to sway to the music. In Australia we have rituals such as Anzac Day services and AFL Grand Finals. When I first arrived in Australia in 1991 a small group of RSL veterans would gather for the dawn service. Now such occasions are packed with people who gather at the rising of the sun as we remember them.

John the Evangelist writes of Jesus as the Word, the Light of the World helping seekers navigate their back to God. We hear of the serpent, symbol of death restoring health and life and giving new direction.

So many of our rituals are about light. Many Anglican Churches face east to the rising sun. John the Evangelist depicts Christ as the true sun. As the sun gives life then seems to die at sunset to return at dawn the true star Christ gives eternal life to the cosmos created, renewed, and remade through the Holy Spirit the giver of truth who turns us to the Inward Light that illuminates our very being. The sun gives life, its an incredibly complex star full of electromagnetic activity, more complex even than the electromagnetic activity in our brains. Some of us get up to greet the rising sun or contemplate sunset. We light candles in worship and make use of ritual to tell our stories. The red sanctuary lamps a reminder of the eternal Presence of God.

Ancient words and actions connect us to the past and renew our lives. This is especially true on Easter Eve when after dark, the great light of the new fire is lit at the Vigil and the Candle is blessed to be lit throughout the 50 days of Pascha. The minister lifts the candle and sings ‘Christ the light’ and all respond ‘Thanks be to God’ an ecstatic cry of hope and trust in the Risen Christ.

‘Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present’

The planet is now from space lit like a Christmas tree. Our streets are filled with illuminating advertising and screens are everywhere. In many cities of the world the sun is seen through a smog of fumes and few if any stars can be seen. We might say that this human light is like a kind of visual noise so that the sacred is lost and we remain lost and unfulfilled in the disenchantment of modernity. We have lost the rhythm of the great song of creation.

A Lenten practice may be to intentionally pray at dawn and dusk giving thanks for the life of light and life. Lighting a candle at home when we read scripture and pray or share a meal connects us to candles lit in church in prayer and in the Eucharist for as the old prayer book says in translation of a more ancient prayer from the old monastic office of Compline.

“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee O Lord, and in thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. For the love of thy only Son, Jesus Christ. Amen

Spiritual Practices 3 Lent 3 (Year B) Being in Nature

 

Spiritual Practices 3 ‘Being in Nature’ Fr. Nicholas

I have had the same spiritual guide for many years. When I look up from my desk at Belair, my guide is always there to inspire. My guide, a tall lemon scented gum. Every year there are leaves to sweep up. There is a season where the tree sheds bark and a new grey sleek coat emerges. In rain, the tree’s perfume is exquisite, wet, earthy lemony and sensual. At flower season, rainbow and musk lorikeets descend for a wild and loud party, liberally blessing cars, and people. Sometimes branches fall in high winds to be cut up and placed in the green bin.  The tree must be pruned regularly for health and longevity by expert arborists. This tall lemon scented gum has a curling branch which people stop to admire. This recursive limb is a reminder of the gift of walking. I was born, you see, with turned in feet which as a baby had to be broken, reset, and encased in plaster. Like the mark on the trunk of the tree where a branch has been broken, I too have been broken and reset and the scar and sometimes aching feet remind me of that gift.  My spiritual guide has a language moving with the wind. This tree that shares my space is beautiful.

I love to learn about trees and their mysterious world. I am entranced by their ability to communicate with each other, and with the reciprocal relationship that many have with other beings.  Trees are a wonderful mystery. They live in a reciprocal relationship with us, along with other plant life, they give oxygen to the planet, cooling our streets, breaking the force of the wind and so much more.  Trees provide the paper on which our Bibles are printed and we can look up to see wooden beams sheltering us in church. Yet we are wise to treat trees with respect and wisdom if we are to co-exist with them and flourish with us. I will miss my spiritual guide when in a month or two we sell the house and I hope the new owners care and appreciate the beauty of this tree.

In this season of Lent, we rest our gaze on the tree of the cross. This tree holds the son of a carpenter who spoke of trees and vines. This is a tree that is dead and it cradles the dead Jesus. His breath has stopped, the branches of his ribs have ceased to move. If we were able to see our own lungs they would seem like branches and leaves. We receive and we give, living in reciprocity with trees and other sentient life. Yet the winter we know gives way to spring as leaves appear on deciduous trees, and as a lemon scented gum sloughs off its old bark, the joy of the resurrection brings the fruit of faith, hope and love.

Dead trees as we know often provide habitat for all kinds of native animals and birds and as they fall, they replenish and nurture the living soil.

To contemplate a tree invites us to wonder and thanksgiving and to penitence for the madness that stole from the tree of good and evil and took a hammer and nails to the living tree of life planted at the crossroads as a sign of shame and humiliation, failure, and violence.

Placed in the earth Jesus was restored and renewed. In the resurrection creation is completed and begins its return to harmony its true destiny.

To contemplate a tree invites us to humility.  The very word comes from the word humus used for rich soil. To contemplate a tree invites us to a recognition that we as human beings participate in an interdependent web of being. My life, your life is a miracle.

The tree of the cross as the hymn says ‘above all other, one and only noble tree’ calls us to wake up, be made anew and in our inner beings grow beyond the stunted damaged selves which our society forces us to be. So, as a Lenten discipline let us contemplate a tree and ask it to speak to us. Not in a literal way of course, but as an invitation to wonder.  Let your lungs breathe opening to the sacrament of the air which the tree offers back to you. See Jesus in that tree and hear his call to life in the here and now.

‘God help us to rise up from our struggle.

Like a tree rises from the soil.

Our roots reaching down to our trouble.

Our rich dark dirt of existence.

Finding nourishment deeply

And holding us firmly.

Always connected.

Growing upwards and into the sun.

Amen’

(p 58 Michael Leunig When I talk to you)

Spiritual Practices 2 Lent 2 Parish of the South Coast: Gratitude

 

Lent 2 Gratitude as a Spiritual practice: Fr. Nicholas

‘In everything give thanks’ 1 Thess 5:18

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, (1884 – 1962) writes in his beautiful book on architecture, The Poetics of Space:

“Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one should make a surveyors map of his lost fields and meadows… Space calls for action and before action the imagination is at work” (page 60)

Lent is above all a season to make space to survey our metaphorical roads and make use of our imagination to envision new possibilities. Every moment brings us to a crossroad. Action or inaction, everything is a decision expressing a faith, a trust, a feeling.

Execution on the cross was reserved for political troublemakers. Heretics were stoned to death by the mob.  Jesus’ teaching troubled the ‘polis’ the city. Jesus’ refusal of violence as a response together with his hospitality and welcome of all, flowed from the profound sense of thanksgiving for the gift not only of his life but of the deep authentic life of the Spirit.

As Benedictine Brother David Stendl-Rast writes ‘I am through you.’ This phrase reminds us that we become who we are through our relationships. We all have the possibility of being a gift to the other and receiving through others. Gratitude flows from this insight and indeed Brother David is the founder of www.gratefuleness.org His life models gratefulness or gratitude. The opposite writes biologist Rupert Sheldrake, is a sense of entitlement.

‘Our everyday life in a money-based economy heightens ingratitude because there is no need to feel grateful for a service we pay for’ (page 47 Science and Spiritual Practice’)

Sheldrake adds that entitlement leads to depersonalisation. We come to value others because of their status or wealth. We begin to blame others, people experiencing poverty, refugees and those searching for work, Envy is another of the sour fruits of ingratitude. Its no wonder that the wandering Jesus, healing, and teaching people that God was among them caused hostility. Jesus made space for people to freely imagine a different kind of future.

Jesus is a reflective and reflexive teacher. To be reflexive is to question our questions and assumptions. The space for this practice emerges from a profound sense that life is a gift and from this insight gratitude and generosity. An inner sense of freedom begins to blossom within us.

‘all of us are here only because our planet exists, and life on earth has evolved over billions of years to give us this living planet on which we totally depend’ (Sheldrake p48)

Our existence is not the result of a blind mechanical universe but comes from ‘God’ and therefore we may give thanks for the web of life of which we are part. Paul writes, ‘in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus’

There are many tragedies in life, we experience or witness great suffering sometimes caused by others. We gaze on the cross through which Jesus, and doubtless countless innocent others were unjustly put to death by the occupation army. Today people are tortured or treated cruelly. We cannot be thankful for the cross or indeed for any evil, but we can find ways to be thankful in that situation. Perhaps in a dark moment another person noticed or held our hand and we felt that human bond. Animals that share our lives can often sense our mood and offer comfort. Gratitude emerges to bless us.

‘Space calls for action and before action the imagination is at work’ writes Bachelard.

In our faith the Eucharist (a word that means thanksgiving) is at the centre of our community. We are nourished by Scripture, words, and stories brough to life by imagination. We imagine others in compassionate prayer before breaking bread and blessing wine, ‘which earth has given and human hands have made’ We choose to stand with Jesus and his radical inclusive vision.

One practice that we can adopt as a response to the gift of life is saying grace over our meals. Beyond set words we see, touch, smell and taste the food. We reflect on its origins and all the people involved in its preparation from farm gate to our plate. We ask ourselves about issues of justice and we may begin a conversation about the ethics of our plate as well as enjoying our meal. We engage in reflective and reflexive thinking. We may choose to act.

‘If indeed I am through you’ we cross into abundance which is of course the resurrection at each crossroad.  We are grateful in every circumstance.

Spiritual Disciplines: First Sunday in Lent (Year B) Meditation

 

Lent 1 2024 Spiritual Disciplines:  Meditation:  Nicholas

I heard the distinctive sound of car tyres on the course windblown sand of Moama beach against the wash of the sea gently caressing the shoreline, the delicate aromas of the beach and the spring sun on my arms. I opened my eyes and there was a police car a few metres away. I met the gaze of the young man framed by the open car window as he gazed down on the circle of people sitting on the sand. There was one word uttered softly, ‘peaceful’ a gentle wave and an electrical hum as the window ascended and slowly away went the police car.

As our world has become ever more complex, life more and more uncertain and stressful many of us are turning to various forms of meditation, sometimes called mindfulness. People meditate for any number of reasons. In one form or another it has always seemingly been part of human experience. Its not always about sitting still; attentiveness, a word I prefer, can be woven beautifully into our days cooling our brains from their work of thinking and deciding.

I feel as a person who meditates a strong sense of connectedness with Jesus on his retreat in the wilderness. For the Gospels the wilderness is a raw and brutal place, like parts of many of our inner cities breaking bad.  The heavens are violently ripped open, like the curtain in the Temple ripped at the death of Jesus. The Spirit is at once a grubby rock pigeon and like a bouncer at a nightclub pushing out an intruder. A reminder that Mark may be giving of the expulsion of the first humans from Paradise.  Jesus is immersed in his calling and like a Jewish prophet or a Greek wandering philosopher wrapped in his cloak must embrace within his being his Great Work and his coming arrest by the police and his judicial execution by the State. Jesus is in no lineage of teaching or apostolic succession. It is the Divine mystery which calls him out and gives him his authority. Jesus is at peace with himself which above all else threatens others and continues to do so.

On Moama beach 14 years or more ago I sat in a circle with people, sometimes referred to as ‘troubled youth’ who would have been likely to have encountered the police under different circumstances. They had all been excluded from formal education and I was there with youth work colleagues working with the city of Onkaparinga. Earlier we had practiced some brief forms of attentiveness or mindfulness trainings and then had come a ritual where we stood on the footbridge at the mouth of the Onkaparinga River and released fragrant lemon scented gum leaves into which we had mentally placed some of our memories and hurts to be carried into the mingling of fresh and salt water. On the sand we were gathering the experiences of the day before a celebratory pizza after which those young people would return to the reality and challenges of life. I wonder sometimes what has happened to them and if that day gave them some strategies for their lives.

Attentiveness is a powerful way of training the mind. It helps us to recognise we are more than our thoughts and far from numbing the mind I believe it makes room for better and more life-giving decisions. Long retreats, long sittings are not for everyone and indeed can be harmful but brief attentiveness practices can support us in the ebbs and flows of life. Meditative practices do not supress the angels and demons in our own minds and the noise of our own anxieties but they can help us to live more wisely. The biologist and Anglican Rupert Sheldrake writes, ‘Meditation helps bring our minds closer to ultimate reality, which is conscious, loving and joyful. Our minds are derived from God, and share in God’s nature. Through meditation we can become aware of our direct connection with this ultimate source of our consciousness when we are not distracted by thoughts, fantasies, fears and desires’ (p 40 Science and Spiritual Practices’)

The word meditation comes from the same Indo-European root as medicine. Latin ‘mediatio’ means to attend to or apply oneself to. This fits well with the theme of Lent in which we in community encourage and support each other in spiritual practices. If prayer is both speaking and listening then attentive moments and minutes is listening to the voice of love which speaks to us from our truest and deepest selves.

As I practice meditation whatever form it takes I either begin or continue with the brief prayer beloved of the Orthodox Church. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy”.  In this practice we place ourselves at one with Jesus, open to the Spirit and in union with all creation being made whole and in communion with the Church called into the blessedness of the Divine.

I love to meditate in quiet churches before the blessed sacrament. I also love to meditate with my eyes open for safety on a crowded street and especially by the sea or wild places. Being in nature is healing for me. It is also the practice of Jesus who meditated and prayed in the open air and we too can expect angels even in the form of police cars to stop and bear witness to the peace from above and we may even weave wild beasts and creation into our care.

A Sermon for Epiphany 5 (Year B) Parish of the South Coast

 Sermon for Epiphany 5 Feb 4 2024

‘He departed and went to a lonely place, and prayed there’

Sometimes the Greek word ‘lonely’ is translated as ‘desolate.’ Loneliness and desolation are powerfully evocative. Perhaps at this moment you are feeling a sense of loneliness or reminded of an experience of desolation when you felt alone and isolated. Despair is never too far away and often adding to that sense that sense of being overcome or overwhelmed.

Jesus departs and disappears. In Mark the disciples search for him and in Luke it is the crowds hungry for healing. Why are you here Jesus? Why are you indeed in this God forsaken place? Why are you as the poet Yeats’s put it ‘in the rag and bone shop of the heart’ (‘Desertion of the Circus Animals’)

‘He departed and went to a lonely place, and prayed there’

At the Royal Adelaide Hospital I convened a small group that sat for twenty minutes or so in the sacred space on level three. We were very much interfaith, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, several Christians and a Quaker who came regularly from outside the hospital community to support our Contemplation group.  There were nurses, allied health, health science, students, volunteers, patients, and visitors. No words were ever used and a timer ensured that no one had to watch the clock giving all ample time to move at the beginning of the next shift.

 

For me this time alone together with others was a powerful time of healing and reconnection. It was for me and others a way of being in solidarity with the desolation and loneliness that so many experience during their admission as well as renew strength and focus for our compassionate and creative work in the hospital. Pierre Lacout the Swiss Carmelite priest who became a Quaker writes

‘A soul gathered in silent worship is never alone with God.  It is always in communion with the souls of all other worshippers; its silence plunges it into that Inward Light which lightens every person’ (p10 God is silence)

When I am most truly alone, I’m one with all’ says the Benedictine monk Brother David Stendl-Rast.

It seems strange to suggest that the antidote to loneliness and desolation is to be alone yet in a conscious communion and connection to the living breathing cosmos and indeed to our own bodies.

In our loneliness and longing we say that Jesus has got there first and makes us welcome. In the story he does not return but with his students moves to a new place where he is unknown so that the healing medicine of the Gospel may become manifest. We too are taken to a new place, not physically but in our perception of life.

Let us fly alone to the Alone as Plotinus wrote. May the Divine Presence cool the fever of our desires and raise and restore us to the place of wisdom. May the gift and grace of silent prayer draw us closer for the sake of the world and unite us whatever our faith and philosophy in the practice of fearless compassion