On International Women's Day celebrating two special women preachers my mother the Rev'd Beryl Rundle ordained Deacon in 1987, Deaconess 1985 and the Rev'd. Katherine Ward (nee Rundle) on her ordination in 2019 now a priest serving in East London with Bishop Stephen.

Australian Women Preach - a posting for International Womens' Day on 8 March

Australian Women Preach

By Australian Women Preach

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A podcast that showcases preaching by Christian women from across all denominations, relevant to contemporary Australian life. We model the Church we want to be: inclusive, diverse and welcoming.

An initiative of WATAC (Women and the Australian Church) and the Grail in Australia.

This podcast is produced by Louise Maher. The music on this podcast has been created by theologian, musician, songwriter, and teacher Danielle Anne Lynch. You can listen to more of Danielle’s music on Spotify, iTunes or YouTube.

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.