Liminal fortitude? 4

A year had passed since my brief but memorable meeting with Hope and Wisdom: two friends whose presence in my life is needed, but almost entirely un-admitted; longed for, but for the most part undeclared. I met Hope again one Sunday morning, when I learned that the health of the family member previously spoken of had deteriorated markedly. I repeated the offer made a year earlier, and left it for her to phone me if I was needed. Two weeks passed, but still without my having heard from her, and though I had made a conscious decision to wait – it had to be entirely her choice and her own wish for me to become in any way involved – I was finding it increasingly difficult not to contact her. I attended the Ash Wednesday service at our parish church, and I met her again when I walked in. I remained with her during the service, and found myself drawn into a deep awareness of the weight of the cross she has been carrying. I had no doubt that she had, and still has, contact with good friends who help to carry her burden, but with the added dimension of reliably stable ground having been taken from under her feet, I felt called to do what I could to make the ground feel solid again for her. The rock is always there, but experiencing its unwavering stability sometimes takes the steadying hand of a friend who is not among those closest to the emotional sharing of the burden.

‘Your unique presence in your community is the way God wants you to be present to others. Different people have different ways of being present. You have to know and claim your way. That is why discernment is so important. Once you have an inner knowledge of your true vocation, you have a point of orientation. That will help you decide what to do and what to let go of, what to say and what to remain silent about, when to go out and when to stay home, who to be with and who to avoid. ... Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. ... your community also needs your creative absence.’ (Henri Nouwen. The Inner Voice of Love.)

“We miss you.” The touch from those three words a year earlier was undeniable, and yet, other than giving voice to my immediate wish to help in whatever way may have been necessary or possible, I found myself hanging back. The possibility of having closer and more frequent contact with two of the very few people with whom I could feel both comfortable and safe, and with whom I had long wanted that contact, had suddenly presented itself, and I waited; and waited. I had some sort of expectation that if these friends missed me – for friends they are, in spite of our lack of contact and almost non-existent communications – there would be a follow-up to those three beautifully welcome words. And I found myself being inextricably bound by my own waiting, until the binding held me so tightly that I was once more motionless in the grip of my unrecognized fears; like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

I waited for the follow-up contact that did not come, making no move to respond myself because of my fear regarding where those words might lead me.

As I see it now, a door had been opened for me by their utterance, and I had waited, in the hope that someone would arrive at my side, take me by the hand, and lead me through the door without any deliberate action being required of me. I would have gone quietly, I am sure; I would have gone willingly, I think; I would like to go further, and should be able to say that I would have gone eagerly, but the fear is rising even as I write these words. Would I? Would I have gone at all? Would I even have allowed the possibility of a situation in which any follow up could have occurred? It is easy to tell myself that I am imagining myself into non-existent situations, but however true that may be of present thoughts about something that did not in fact occur more than a year ago, it does not alter the fearful truths existing in my present day-to-day paralysis.

When those words were spoken, I was aware that continued waiting would probably find me in the same position a year later. That is precisely what happened. When I wrote about it previously (24.12.10), I had not had any further contact with Hope, and even at the beginning of Lent this year, my lack of real contact had left me in an untroubled situation. While recently wading against the current of my own words, I came across these, written a few weeks ago: “... rather than the experience ending as I had feared – burying me still further within myself, and even cutting me off from any future contact with them, or with anybody else with the potential for bringing me further into the clear light of day – it simply left me unchanged: still uncertain, still afraid, still asleep, and still blind to the door that had been opened for me."

Those words confirm to me that, while having recognized the possibility of a door having been opened for me, even that recently, I had not begun to be troubled in the way that I now am. That only began when what could be described as the much delayed follow up to “We miss you” came about during one of our conversations.

‘That is why you must take up all God's armour, 

or you will not be able to put up any resistance on the evil day, 

or stand your ground even though you exert yourselves to the full.’ 

(Ephesians 6:13)

Liminal fortitude? 3

‘Put on the full armour of God so as to be able to resist the devil's tactics.’ (Ephesians 6:11)

In becoming aware that we are not alone, we may realize that we had forgotten that we had at one time been travelling with others. Now we find ourselves with them again, and we suspect that, though we had no ongoing sense of their presence, they may never have been away.

I have never been able to forget that there was a time when I had been accompanied by others; I could not have made it through some parts of my journey at that time without them. That indeed was why they were there: their presence was no accident, or mere coincidence. It may also have been intended, and necessary, that I should spend a long time without such company: with Jesus as my sole companion. But now, with my own awareness of others having been made real through a recent merging of paths, and through closer contact with Hope, one of the few persons with whom I have always felt at ease, a potential change is hovering (with God’s Spirit perhaps) only just out of reach. It is only beyond reach at all if I remain fixed to the spot: making no move towards it. And there, in that invitation: that extended hand: that smile of welcome: that opened door; I see and feel other things which, other than in myself, may not exist at all: – I hesitate before what appears to be the answer to a long-lived wordless prayer, and find myself viewing the innocent and encouraging beauty of the possibility before me, through vague shadows of doubt.

Do I only imagine that there is an invitation? Taking the offered hand requires only the shortest of steps, but I have to take the step. Am I misinterpreting the smile? Is it merely an everyday friendly response to a normal moment of conversation, and not in any way related to anything hoped for that runs through my mind? And that door; is it really open? If so, am I meant to be there? – is it open for me? Or is the whole idea of the door a figment of my imagination?

What may be the simplest of steps becomes the smallest of challenges, but, however small, it is a challenge; and with hesitation, it grows. My wish not to risk anything which could, in the least way, spoil this much needed contact, prevents me from doing anything at all. And the difficulty mounts with the passing days. It becomes less likely that I shall say anything, and while nothing may show outwardly, I know that something within me will gradually fall to pieces. I do not allow myself to think about where that would lead me, but it is impossible to shake off the knowledge that it would be a place from which my return would be almost inconceivable; and that chimes frighteningly with the growing sensation of being where I find myself today.

I sense the predatory crouch of a truth in these thoughts. Perhaps I would be led nowhere, and perhaps that is precisely the point. Something is working to send me nowhere; and to succeed in that objective it need do nothing other than ensure that I remain exactly where I am; I am already there: I am nowhere. Being here keeps me out of the way; out of action. So long as I remain blind, deaf, lost, and asleep, and so long as when next I fall, I give up, and remain down, beyond the reach of those who would have me stand again: those who would walk beside me in a shared search for others in need of whatever gifts we can bring, then I shall be of no consequence; a non-combatant; disconnected from the power source which would bring me back to life. 

Even when, for the most part, distanced from the immediate physical reality of my life – when writing here – I am running, as it were, on batteries that are always being recharged in my real world; they are never emptied of what actually makes my heart and soul tick. It is therefore no surprise to me that this coincides with having circled round to find myself aware of the contrived group of twelve followers again: The Named, The Touched, and through to The Sent; the unknown companions who share these pages with me (thank you again for being there). We have not been walking our paths alone; nor, in our watching and waiting, do we stand alone. We all need to hold on to that thought. We have been placed in each other's paths for a reason; we have the potential for helping each other on our journeys, and, for much of the time, all it takes is our continued presence. In each other we find the reality of God’s provision: living proof of the Presence which will never desert us or cut us adrift. 

It is in having come round to the point at which I hear my name being called again –both within the powerful reality of my renewed contact with Christ’s presence in human form (Hope), and within these written thoughts – that I have come to more fully recognize some aspects of what I believe to be my own predominant flaw: the weakness that most readily incapacitates me, and keeps me out of action while I continue to fade, falter, forget, and fall towards a time when the powers that keep me quiet will forget they ever had cause to keep half an eye on me.

My failure is that which, before anything else, is the main reason for Christians not speaking out to those who have no faith, and who have no awareness of God’s presence among us. In my own case, it has even become my main reason for not speaking up in the presence of others who do believe: even those who are further along their paths than I am along mine, and especially those with whom I long to communicate and with whom I yearn for fellowship. 

How can that have come about? And how have I been held in that grip for so long? I am unable to break out of it for myself. If it were otherwise, I would have done it long ago.

I have been held back, imprisoned and tightly bound by my failure in one of the four things that, for me, echo more loudly than anything else through the pages of scripture. I love God; I do my best to love my neighbour; I strive to forgive all, even myself; but though I hear the words, over and over again, “Do not be afraid”, I fear. And the most frightening thing about it – that which, even in its mere admission, makes me want to delete all that I have written for these posts, and retreat from the thoughts that have plagued me for these weeks – is the incomprehensible awareness that the one thing of which I am most afraid, is that I might become afraid. It makes no sense, but the only fear of which I am conscious is that I might fear.

‘For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, 

but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world, 

the spirits of evil in the heavens.’ 

(Ephesians 6:12)

Liminal fortitude? 2

In connection with the foregoing post, I wrote the following two months ago, and while not having used it in a ‘stand-alone’ form at the time, I include it here as part of my rather lengthy unravelling of the overlapping stages of a disquieting theme.

In drawing together the various strands of relevant experiences over recent weeks, in an attempt to make sense of the underlying shape and direction that is undoubtedly being waved in front of me, I am aware that the spiralling nature of my spiritual life has brought me once again to a point at which I am being called by my own name. I have come full circle, not to arrive at the same place, but at a new start point on a subtly different and slightly more elevated plane. I have walked alone for much of my circuitous route, but now find myself within sight of some of my fellow travellers again: the group of companions with whom I thought I might find myself sharing parts of my journey: the group suggested soon after I began thinking aloud on these pages, but also the possibility of known friends from earlier times.

In coming closer to others as our paths converge, I have realized that two travellers (Wisdom and Hope), both of whom are known to me, have come close enough for us to acknowledge each other. I begin to think they may have been beside me for the last twenty years of my journey, even when I thought I was completely alone. Alone, that is, apart from a constant Presence whose existence I can never deny. Perhaps our meeting will lead to a revived fellowship: a meeting of two or three in His name, which will bring His presence to life in more powerful ways for each of us; the beginnings of a gathering which, though answering longings of my own, would come about for as yet unknown and greater reasons. 

My longing may have been my experience of an ongoing call to take my place as part of something new about to be done. My waiting too, may have been part of something greater; it may have been shared by others for whom, like me, nothing seemed to be happening; or even, as I have recently learnt through this renewed contact with friends, shared in by those for whom doors have failed to open, or have closed in front of them. Perhaps many small fires have been lit, but have been deliberately maintained as no more than a slowly spreading glow; in place, though not recognized as being so, and ready and waiting for the right time: God’s time. Perhaps that time is close, and we are being called to move closer to one another. In doing so we may disturb the air around us just enough to fan our waiting embers into flames. “Where two or three...” again. Our waiting has ensured that the kindling within us is bone dry, and what happens next can go only one way.

I cannot separate these thoughts from my awareness of where we are in the Church year. Could our lead up to Pentecost have any bearing on this?  All we can do, and must do, is follow our leading, and wait; come together – at the very least, not remain out of touch with each other – and wait for the right time. We will know it when it comes.

Do I really need anything other than Jesus? 

In reality, no; but in my continuing frailty and uncertainty - yes. I need His presence in others as company on my journey. I have need of them. We have need of each other. The truth underlying such feelings is that, in my weakness, my need for Him is not always, nor in all ways, satisfied by my knowledge of His unseen presence within me, and at my side. There are times when I need my awareness of Him to be heightened by His presence in other people with whom I can share that awareness.

We are called to allow ourselves to become vulnerable in His presence, and I have recently been brought within earshot of His call to vulnerability in the presence of those who have played a part in leading me to Him. I still fear making any approach; even after being blessed by the potential invitation contained in those three words: "We miss you." The amount of time passed since they were spoken is witness to that fact, but, despite all my foregoing thoughts, until I change something, the situation (for me at least) will probably stay the same. If I am missed by those with whom I long to have more contact, what can possibly hold me back? One thing only; that multi-faceted enemy of so much that is good: my own fear.

‘We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for “finding himself”. If he persists in shifting this responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within. ... Although in the end we alone are capable of experiencing who we are, we are instinctively gifted in watching how others experience themselves. ... we are too prone to welcome everybody else’s wrong solution to the problems of life. There is a natural laziness that moves us to accept the easiest solutions – the ones that have common currency among our friends.’ (Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island.)

Liminal fortitude? 1

‘... the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the words of the prophets and the assistance of grace are available, the journey must still be travelled alone. No teacher can carry you there. There are no preset formulas. Rituals are only learning aids, they are not the learning. Eating organic food, saying five Hail Marys before breakfast, praying facing east or west, or going to church on Sunday will not take you to your destination. No words can be said, no teaching can be taught that will relieve spiritual travellers from the necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their own lives toward the identification of their individual selves with God.’  (M. Scott Peck. The Road Less Travelled.)

Another unplanned and unexpectedly long break from these pages has been brought to an end by my continuing need to unravel thoughts through the, at times, laborious writing process. It is not, in fact, the writing with which I struggle, but the process of dragging my thoughts – more accurately perhaps, the emotions and depth of feeling in which they are frequently wrapped – into a form of submission, and then forcing them onto the page. Once there, however buried, hidden, fragmented, disguised or diaphanous they may still be, some poorly executed sketch of them is at least anchored before me. I have something which cannot escape me again; and though I still may not know what it is that is striving to be understood, I do at least have something. That matters.

I have made known that I have gained from these pages when reading them back months after writing them, but I have gradually, and more frequently, found himself becoming one of the audience: as though not always aware of that with which I have been filled until after its overflowing. 

Perhaps it is time for me to lose any lack of responsibility which may have been hiding behind my wish to remain unseen among my fellow sheep, in spite of my awareness of having been searched for, and found. In shedding any sturdily erected pretence that I have not already learned that I must accept some form of responsibility, I may find myself able to bathe more fully in my knowledge that I have already returned home to find that I am a much loved son. From within that all enveloping warmth and gentle pressure: that brief recurrence of a return to the spiritual womb in which I had been formed, and from which I was brought into being, I may find the parallel, and presently absent, awareness and reality of my also being a brother: the long awaited and longed for opportunity to be part of something greater than my solitary dreams. To take my place, wherever that may be, as part of a quorum of two, or group of three; or more. A meaningful and productive meeting of hearts, minds and souls in His name, from which may come the blossom, and the fruit, of which, as yet, I can see no sign.

 

The frail, half understood something – the anchored word that is so important to me as a graspable start-point – seems increasingly difficult to find; and, as my most recent experience of hunting for it has shown, even finding it does not necessarily mean I am close to successfully pinning it out for dissection and subsequent understanding. I have been bogged down in a sea of words for several weeks: trying to wade among them as though moving through treacle. Whenever they have formed into a few sentences strung together, they have made sense to me, but the next fragment of truth or understanding, or feeling of direction, may have no apparent connection with whatever else I have just trapped. Clicking on ‘save’ after every small string of words feels like tripping the door on a cage: “Got it!” Every click ensures I will have something to feed on tomorrow, rather than having to go hunting again. That also matters.

Struggling to capture something substantial from among my thoughts can be enjoyable, but not when it occupies most of my waking hours today, and tomorrow, and the following day ... The hunt is only the beginning, and no beginning has meaning if it is never followed by the next step, however long or short the search may be. The hunter who never bags his prey will starve to death. The thinker who never nails down a thought will disintegrate without ever coming to an awareness of who he or she is. The praying person who remains trapped in cosy devotions, liturgical forms, habitual repetitions, superficial needs and uttered words, but never searches for a path along which he or she may truly share in the companionship of Christ, will fade unseen, and unmissed (in spiritual terms), from the face of the earth.

Those who, like myself, search for whatever it is they are called to do without ever seeming to find it, also (I believe) wander towards a fading light, and will themselves fade from sight; but we do not all fade away. Some will tire of their search and go home to settle into another less troubling mindset, and these could indeed be said to do so. Others, however, may be more lastingly affected by their experience, either tending towards crumbling within the debilitating sensations of their frustration and the apparent waste of potential in their lives, or, through perseverance, reaching a point at which they see the whole experience, however long-running it may have been, as a time of preparation and waiting in obedience to God’s will: a time of wakefulness and watching, during which, far from having failed to hear God’s call, they have resisted and rejected the many thoughts and ideas which have tempted them, but which have not come from Him. A lesson in discernment, and a testing perhaps, for more challenging decisions yet to be made?

My recent struggles to untangle and make sense of my own situation, have been part of a new dawning that has slowly brought light into my own separation from almost everything and everyone. Recent weeks have brought contact and conversation with someone (Hope) who has seemed to be holding a door open for me. Through the self-enforced process of seeking understanding of myself through the written word (my own written words, and now, finally, through placing some sort of result from that process here), I have come to acknowledge the possibility that I may have to include myself among those whose waiting has been a time of preparation.

As such, any sense of relief accompanying this broadening awareness is purely momentary, as it gives way to a greater determination, and to a conviction that we have not only the happy intention, but the ability to watch and wait for as long as may be necessary. It also brings an increasing acceptance of our heightened awareness that the nature of the call cannot necessarily be anticipated. But, by returning to, and resolutely remaining in our places: by standing our ground, we have already answered a call; we have been “called up”, and have responded in ways that have made us ready to put on the full armour of God. We are ready, willing and able to respond to whatever may be required of us. That in itself is a powerful response; one that is built on the hard rock of endurance.

But – and this is the thought that brought the initial glint of something brightening on my horizon – could it be that there are far more of us in that position today than we have ever imagined? Are we, after all, not the apparently isolated, fearful, shy and ineffective persons we had taken ourselves to be? – longing to be part of some greater happening, yet seemingly unable to gain access to whatever it is that we need to actually make it happen? We each see ourselves as deficient in some way; one believes himself to be blind; another that she is deaf; one is lost; another is asleep; some have fallen, but none of us have stayed down – those who have are not among us. Some, fallen, and feeling unable to stand once more, found themselves lifted to their feet by others among whom they suddenly found themselves. We are all made aware that we have not been walking our paths alone; nor, in our watching and waiting, do we stand alone.

We are being called to ‘grow strong in the Lord, with the strength of his power’ (Ephesians 6:10)

‘So stand your ground, 

with truth a belt round your waist, and uprightness a breastplate,

wearing for shoes on your feet the eagerness to spread the gospel of peace' 

(Ephesians 6:14-15)

Into the light

It is that time of year when, in the absence of snow and ice, and all things displaying and speaking of winter’s dormancy masquerading as death, and even as non-existence, the countryside is filled with a wonderful air of expectancy. The inhospitable grip in which it was clenched during December has relaxed and trickled away, to leave us dangerously close to believing that winter has gone. The mornings and evenings are lightening noticeably; and yesterday, with the sun shining, and the wind and rain having left the sodden, twig-strewn ground to sparkle and shine its fully washed – if not half-drowned – surface into the light of a brand new day, every tree and bush, every hidden bulb and root, seemed possessed of the same excited consciousness that filled the suddenly so exuberant birds.

The feel of the day had been just as clear when colours were barely discernable. I walked across the garden at dawn, and as soon as I had stepped from the house, the chorus captivated me. The dangerous hope that spring had come was being shared by the life all around me; so vulnerable if and when winter looks back at us from wherever it pretends to have gone, and decides to revisit us. Among the other choristers three Robins loudly proclaimed their territories, to East and West and North of me, and having distanced myself from them as I walked toward the South, a fourth built song from its drowned-out throat until it became the loudest of all, singing from a Hawthorn tree, mere feet away, as though it sang for me.

In one way or another, my thoughts are mostly in the countryside even when my body has to spend time in cities or wasting miles on motorways. When spirit and mind and body all find themselves walking together within its folds, I am immersed in something I know and love; I am where I am meant to be, and I am close to the reality of the person I was born to be. I am, at the same time, both at the very edge of something immense, wonderful, supremely natural yet not entirely comprehensible, and fully enclosed and immersed in it – hand and heart; mind and spirit; ear and eye; tooth and claw. It is part of the blossom which turns to fruit in solitude.

The morning reminded me of something I had read in John O’Donohue’s book, Anam Cara. A story about a monk named Phoenix, who stopped reading his breviary to listen to the song of a bird. He listened so purely that when he returned into the monastery he no longer recognized anyone there. The monks found mention of a monk named Phoenix in their annals who had mysteriously disappeared.

I find that potentially so real. Stories of time lost through encounters with fairies are the stuff of imagined enchantment and dreams, but here there is a tale that whispers of some indefinable possibility not too far removed from truth.

Being deeply immersed in something: having knowledge of it, understanding it at a level of awareness that can only come from a deep and continuing involvement born of a desire to be involved in it; that is where total immersion comes from. The willing plunge into its life-swallowing depths perpetuates and further deepens the desire for a continuation of this utter dedication to whatever has so completely grasped our attention.

A recent short but (as I found it) powerful sermon brought this form of transformation to life for me in a way that had not occurred before. The context of my deepened awareness was Baptism; and my thanks are due to the priest of St Joseph’s Parish, Upton upon Severn. His talk of a sword being plunged into water to harden it permanently as its maker had formed it to be, and of cloth being dyed by weavers: being totally immersed in water to take on the depth and intensity of the predetermined colour of the dye: the colour required for its part in the completion of the woven cloth. These, as well as his reference to mistakes made by a BBC commentator during England’s Ashes winning cricket match: mistakes which would have been impossible for someone truly immersed in their subject, really brought home for me what the total immersion of Baptism is all about. We do not use total immersion in the Catholic Church, but the deeper impression made on me by Fr Dominic’s words has made sense of my long-held but suppressed attraction to the idea of being buried in that way so as to be “born again by water and the Holy Spirit”.

I was baptized as an infant, and I was confirmed at much too young an age. One of my recurring patterns of thought has for a long time revolved around a belief that we need a mature ‘confirmation’ of our having been confirmed; an entirely voluntary, but fully understood event that makes our youthful statements of conviction and involvement a meaningful reality. Jesus had thirty hidden years of learning, preparation and discernment before he was ready to begin his work. It was only then that He rose from the waters of the Jordan to be greeted by the Spirit of God descending on Him. Whatever is it that makes us believe we and our children are ready to proclaim anything in our early or mid teens? My own thirtieth year has long gone, but if it had not, I have little doubt that I would be seeking a quiet and unhurried total immersion somewhere; not as any form of desertion or protest, and certainly not for some sort of amusement, talking point or memory. Even my wish to remain unnoticed would be overruled by my desire to give expression to my own matured longing to be one of God’s adopted sons; one of Christ’s disciples. I am a self-proclaimed sinner who needs the Holy Spirit in my life, and who will do whatever He may ask of me. It would be me, declaring to God, to those around me, and to myself, that I am irreversibly and longingly part of Christ’s Church; a proof of my knowing that He has called me by my name.

Rachel Denton ( www.stcuthbertshouse.co.uk ) writing in the Redemptorist Sunday Bulletin for 5^th December 2010, caught my attention with her words, ‘... one of the “fruits” of solitude is this much-heightened receptivity to experiences.’ She was not writing particularly of the many apparently insignificant little things, coincidences, paths crossed, fleeting glimpses and words, that seem to come my way at times, but those words did make me realize that there is a very real connection between those moments and my love of solitude. How much I would have missed if I had never learned to take my place within its caress. I shudder to think that I may not even have noticed a single note of birdsong accompanying yesterday’s dawn.

And it had been the 17^th of January, the feast of St Antony of the desert – at the very edge of which I had ‘heard the sound of God walking in the garden’ once again.

Willing and able

Most of us, if expecting or hoping to be called at all, may be anticipating something easily recognized and readily incorporated into our lives with little or no rearrangement of our routines. But any one of us can be called in ways that may not be easily accepted, either by ourselves or by others. In such cases a vocation will define itself by insistence, by its breaking down of resistance, and our eventual recognition and acceptance of its challenge. A calling cannot become a genuine vocation without its being recognized and accepted, and without its following having become a desire.

Most of the early friars were lay people, and I frequently have to remind myself that St. Francis of Assisi – so well know even to people beyond the reaches of the Church – was not a priest. Initially at least, the Church hierarchy of the day were not best pleased with him or his small band of brothers, and the underlying call in his particular vocation was to express a facet of Christ’s Church as it was meant to be, as opposed to the easy and inappropriate way of living which was the norm for priests and their superiors at the time. The Church owes a great deal to such freelance spirits in its history, and I have no doubt they will have important parts to play in its future.

An excellent piece by Bret Thoman, SFO, on St. Francis and the Church, goes into these aspects of his life. It can be found at: http://www.stfrancispilgrimages.com/images_2/Church.pdf

We use the word ‘vocation’ when speaking of some areas of work outside the recognizable limits of the Church. Not all doctors, nurses, and teachers (among others) have had a profound call into their spheres of work, but those who have, often become real blessings to their profession and to the people to whom they devote their lives. They are frequently the ones behind the benefits and improvements, as well as the cheerfully purposeful atmospheres which become apparent in their places of work, and just as frequently they go almost unnoticed by the world around them. They are responding to their calls, and have no wish to be doing anything else; they love their work, and they excel because they are where they are meant to be.

When this form of vocation in Christians is combined with a conviction that it is also a spiritual calling, there is no question in their minds about what they should be doing. They follow the Spirit’s lead and a small corner of the world becomes a better place because of it. They are sent out, and they go; Christ goes with them, and His church is strengthened and enlarged through their commitment.

Two friends come immediately to mind. One is a teacher: an exceptional and much loved teacher. She had never wanted to do anything other than teach, and only changed schools when she felt irresistibly called by God to do so. She has already worked well past normal retiring age, but this very day, she has finally made known to her school and its governors, that she will be finishing at the end of this school year. A difficult decision for her, but one that had to be made at some time. Precisely because it was, and is, her vocation, she will never truly feel that she should stop; but I suspect that she will soon be called upon to use her gifts in other ways: ways as yet not discernible. God never ceases to have need of such people.

The other person retired some years ago, but is still very much involved in the parish in which she worked and in which she became well known as an exceptional friend to many; always present, always listening, always hearing; always soothing, healing, helping and loving; always God’s Gift in so many lives and situations. When I last spoke with her, she told me that she is still where she is because that is where God has called her to be.

For both women, after years of following their call, how calming, how exciting, and how empowering it must feel to be sure of such a thing. They too have, in a sense, found themselves back at the beginning; a new beginning. They are conscious once again of being called by their name, as they were when they first answered “Yes”. And their answer now will be that same willingness to be used where God wills.

It is that level of readiness and willingness which Christ’s Church needs from each of us: from laity and clergy alike. We should be longing for the call that will enable us to hear ourselves responding with the words, “I hear you Lord”.

 

 

... and waiting

If all else had followed the actual pattern of recent decades, but the number of ordinations to the priesthood had not decreased, then the Church, instead of worrying about the increasingly urgent concerns brought about by the very real shortage of priests, would have been gradually filling itself with men who should not have been ordained. A logical corollary of such a situation is that those men should not have been accepted for training. Thank God we are where we are rather than in that hard to imagine situation.

The lack of new names entering the seminaries is because men are not being called to give their lives in the way in which we have all become so accustomed. We hear concerns, and are ourselves concerned, about the lack of vocations when the cause of our worry is the lack of men stepping forward. These are two completely different sides to the same question. If men were still being called in numbers to the priesthood as we generally understand it, they would still be responding with the same ‘Yes’. There is no reason for genuine vocations to be refused by individuals more frequently today than ten, twenty or fifty years ago; and there are no grounds – other than essential reasons for both discernment and rigorous assessment in the selection process – for the Church to refuse entry to those stepping forward in response to genuine calls.

It may be easy for me, as a person who does not have a vocation to the priesthood, to imagine that I might be turned away from any thought of becoming a priest by my own take on the public perception of the priesthood today. If, in the wake of so many image-shattering scandals, I made the assumption that most people see any member of the clergy as a potential paedophile, I would find it well nigh impossible to place myself in such a position, and therefore am not surprised at the present situation. But I can never accurately assess what I have not experienced. I do not have a vocation to the priesthood, but my own experiences in the growth of my spiritual life tell me that I can gain nothing by using my imagination in the above way. I know that apparently minor and even insignificant things can have not only negative consequences, whether real or imagined, but profound and lasting effects on one’s outlook, confidence, and ability to rise above unfavourable attitudes and false accusations. I can only imagine how powerful a genuine vocation must be in the life of a priest, both before and after ordination, but the comparatively little I know tells me that persons called by God in that way will be able to follow their path regardless of any such widespread concerns. Their vocations are unstoppable. Their potential for good is immense, and much of their power is for the awakening of others to the experience of God’s presence; for disturbing them, and leading them to an encounter that will bring into the open their own calls to participate in a renewed consciousness that we are all essential parts of Christ’s Church. Every one of us is called, and each of us is graced and blessed with the gifts we need to achieve the intended fulfilment of our call. But answering the call will probably be discomforting; disquieting; challenging; but always inspiring.

‘All success we owe to the grace of God. We must not forget that the grace given us is the grace for struggle and not the grace for peace; that we are warriors, athletes, ascetics; that like St. Paul (2 Tim 4:7-8) we must fight on to the end if we would merit the crown.’ (Adolphe Tanquerey. The Spiritual Life (227))

Those words were written for priests and for those studying for the priesthood, but they apply to all of us. The greater involvement of the laity is as unstoppable as the vocations of priests. Recognizable vocations have so drastically reduced in number over the years, but the answer to most of the Church’s dilemmas lies in an inspired and fully awakened harmony between the ordained priesthood and a spiritually mature and committed laity.

The very first time I made a note of words which seemed of particular importance to me, was while reading an article, ‘What Parish Adult Education is all about’, in Priests and People magazine, Feb 1992. Writing about parish teachers and catechists, it said, ‘The most common reason for them starting in the first place was that they had had to fill a gap in the parish programme. This was often done reluctantly or only after considerable nagging by the vicar or parish priest. ... a gloomy recruitment picture ... a kind of crisis management ...’ . My pencilled note, added some time after copying out those words, reads ‘How can anything grow this way?’

It disappoints and worries me to be made aware, through my present thoughts, that in the intervening years so little seems to have changed for the better. We still await something: a change of some sort which feels overdue, and which will surely come. But it is a change that will not truly manifest itself until those who are being called are ready to be caught up in it; it will not allow them to be left behind. Indeed if they are truly being called it will be impossible for them not to take their place. We should be longing for it; praying for it; standing ready and ever awake for it. It will be born of our belonging, nurtured in fellowship, and stirred into a powerful reality by our daring to speak of the half-buried promptings and unshakeable attractions which are unsettling so many of us today. It is not for tomorrow, next week or next year; now is the time for turning to each other, and recognizing the truth of Cardinal Newman’s words, ‘...we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union.’

I have used those words more than once already among these pages, but they are never far from me. They have been circling around me since the day I first read them, after receiving them from a then barely known nun at Stanbrook Abbey. It was inevitable that they should return yet again in the present context, and that they should remind me of a potentially frightening willingness to give voice to my thoughts: a willingness which began to rise in me years ago but which took on a broader and more durable form when I began writing here.

Circling ...

I occasionally include in my written thoughts, a quotation I have already used elsewhere. There is no reason to exclude it when it clearly speaks to whatever my thoughts are at the time; having used it does not disqualify it from further use. But, while always taking care to avoid any accidental or unnecessary repetition, I have found that the last quote in my previous post had also been the ending for one in January 2009 (Recognition 2).

My first reaction was one of mild annoyance and a decision not to draw attention to the fact, but, as is already made clear by my mentioning it, my thoughts very quickly moved on from there as a result of asking myself how I had missed it, and what reason there may have been for its repetition. I only had to read the post titles – ‘An ongoing call’ and ‘Recognition’ – for the few lines already written here to be discarded. I have lost track of the number of times I have had to alter direction when writing for these posts, even when seeming to know exactly what I am sitting down to write about. Indeed those unexpected course changes began almost as soon as I ventured, somewhat nervously, into this internet world. On Christmas Eve 2006 (Following ...) I wrote,

‘... Even that last sentence does not convey what I had set out to say, and yet, it lays the foundation for giving expression to an overflowing which I began to feel as soon as it was written. Things are certainly not going as I thought I had planned. ... my own conscious thoughts dispersed, to be lost in the wake of an overwhelming yet unseen vessel, powering past me as soon as I have set sail for a distant shore. ... I am, for the moment at least, a follower: a disciple. ... I must follow where I am led, trusting that my use of words will not too often lead me off the path;’

Four years later, and after an absence during which my following took me into unexpected and unknown areas, I am still experiencing the same sensations: what I might then have called confusion, but which I now more readily and comfortably accept and describe as direction. Having set off towards whatever had been in my mind when I began tapping the keyboard, I have been steered gently round in a circle – thus losing none of my momentum, and remaining unaware until after it had happened – to give further thought to what I had previously been writing.

That word, ‘previously’, is very much involved here. I have already referred to the quote from Alan Abernethy’s book, that clergy ‘only have a function within a local community that recognizes their ministry and gifts and is willing to share that ministry with them’ and that ‘the body of Christ gives to all who are members an identity, a calling and gifts to offer for the good of all.’ That calling is to every one of us: not just to the ordained, the eminent, the prominent, the recognized, and the clearly visible members of Christ’s Church. It is an ongoing call because it is a call from God; a call that has been echoing down the years since His Spirit’s direction first stirred chosen and influential persons in the Church. A recognizable point along the way was marked for most of us by the Second Vatican Council, though it would be a mistake for us to believe that was the start of this particular call; and an arrogant mistake for anyone involved in the Council or in its early after-effects. It is not every recognizable movement that can necessarily be interpreted as an approach; and no limited approach can be accepted as an arrival at a destination. Certainly there is movement going on almost everywhere, even if much of it is still remains little more than a restless uncertainty, or a discomforted writhing in both presbyteries and pews. But the Spirit of God is still at work, urging us toward that same end. Christ still wants His church back. The reality of that is that He wants us back: all of us. You and me; men and women; laity, deacons, priests, bishops; all of us. And not as individuals only, but as one body: His Church.

Looking for something closer to the time of changes brought about after Vatican II, I came across this among my gathered bits and pieces: from Carlo Carretto, in his book ‘The God Who Comes’.

‘In the minds and hearts of Christians yesterday, the Church was a rock of safety and stability. Now it has become an open arena for every kind of contest, profound or superficial. Clerics and bishops dispute openly ... and the average Christian grows frightened, lost among increasingly anonymous and strangely restless crowds. Many people take refuge in inaction and isolation. Many take up any kind of hobby just to pass the time. Others assume the role of prophet, even though they have nothing to prophesy. And many, finding no other solution, close themselves off in fond memories of the past, dreaming of Latin liturgies, fervent processions, and blind obedience. And, of course, everyone does his best to get just one drop of pleasure out of life ... contributing to a civilization of material prosperity, sex, drugs – the permissive society, a decadent civilization. It is as though a cyclone or an earthquake had just passed, not destroying the house completely, but leaving us insecure. We are discovering the cracks, and there is an undefined sadness in our hearts.’

And two items from the early 1990s: - ‘One of the signs of the times ... was the way he saw the priesthood today was being humbled, through the development of the laity and other not so encouraging things. This he felt was all part of God’s plan to prepare a new type of priest ... who would be more of a co-operator with his people, rather than a lord of the flock. He exhorted his fellow priests to be humble so that God could fill them with His power.’ (in Good News magazine, referring to Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal household, speaking at the National Charismatic Retreat for Priests: 1993)

‘It is surprising how many good Church people there are (clergy as well as laity) who are trying to serve God individually, but they are not rooted in parish community. What do we have to share if it is not our belonging?’ (Priests and People. April 1993. ’How do we renew our people?’)

And this from within the last few years: - ‘If people are to grasp and retain a genuine Christian faith within our pluralist and fast-changing society, they will need to be part of a community of believers, a group in which the full nature of that belief can be worked out.’ (Mike Booker & Mark Ireland. Evangelism – which way now?)

Most people today have neither need nor wish to join the Church for the ‘benefits’ of human authority encountered there; and as the number of pre-Vatican II members declines, the continued presence of younger existing churchgoers, expected to remain in the face of undue levels of masculine human dominance and authority, cannot be counted on. Let us thank God, once again, for having ensured that the majority of our priests are men of and for today: humble men filled with His power, and much loved co-operators with His people. They are the best possible focal points for setting the Church firmly and confidently back on its straight course: for bringing its hesitant circling to an end.

An ongoing call

In my spiritual life, I am always waiting to be approached by others. This is largely a deliberate choice based on a belief that others will be better able than myself to judge my gifts, my potential, and my worth. But I have to acknowledge that it fits comfortably with my own underlying shyness and a sense, not so much of unworthiness as of inadequacy: an unwillingness born of an assumed – and possibly wholly imagined – disqualification which makes persistent attempts to manifest itself as a fear of finding myself out of my depth. I have no such fear or sense of inadequacy in any other area of my life, though the underlying shyness does reach into most corners.
But, having made a conscious decision to respond willingly if and when approached for some form of assistance or involvement, when somebody did ask me to do something, the request concerned what may have been the only task for which I felt completely unqualified and to which I felt unable to answer ‘Yes’. My immediate but unspoken response was the thought, “Dear Lord, are you doing this on purpose?” Of all the things I could have been asked, I had never anticipated the words, ‘Eucharistic Minister’.

I had to say that it was the one thing I really could not take on, explaining that I felt it to be essential that anyone receiving communion in a Catholic Church could correctly make the assumption that the person from whom they were receiving fully believed in the true presence of Christ in the bread or wine being offered. As that has always been something I have doubted and pondered (struggling with it ended long ago), I felt I was not the right person; and though the priest by whom I had been asked did not seem deterred, saying he frequently came across those doubts when talking to people about Catholicism, I had to insist that my conscience left no room for a change of mind. After a brief pause he asked, “What about reading?”

So, not only are there tugs that continue to draw me to people I know in one parish: people who already know me far better than anyone else, but I am also slowly but surely being drawn deeper into another community elsewhere. I have told myself for years that if and when I am asked to do something, I shall do it. But why did it have to restart with the one thing I would have to decline?

 
 

I have just searched my own blog for something completely unrelated to anything here, and was struck by the following words in one of the posts that came up (20.7.08 Loosely bound). ‘A sense of belonging is at the heart of the experience of being a Christian. The initial understanding of that fact – being part of a supportive group of similarly minded individuals, … down through parish and otherwise local communities, to small intimate groups of close spiritual friends – is valuable and valid, but the belonging goes further than that. … it ends where in fact it truly begins: within ourselves. When we find ourselves alone, without any form of human support from within that community, we still belong to it, and we must hope to become aware of the truth behind our collective sense of belonging: that each one of us belongs to Christ; He has claimed us as His own, not ‘en masse’ as what we see and feel as the Church, but individually: He has claimed you, and He has claimed me. We each belong to Him.’

I continue to enjoy the experience of finding my own words speaking back to me in this way, but though my first reaction was to feel the above would help me to resolve the choice which seemed to be formulating in my mind – even before I had become fully aware that a choice was involved – reading through those words again has dissolved not only the choice but even the thoughts and reasons behind my writing of this post. Looking back has distracted me from the train of thought which brought me here today, but in so doing I now feel that it has put me back on the right track. There is a choice which could be made; I could choose to be an exclusive and definite part of either one parish or the other, but perhaps that is not what I am being asked to do. Why should I not be equally seen and known in more than one place? Not through choosing to visit another church merely for a change of scene, or style, or preacher, or because of past connections, or convenient mass times when something clashes with one’s usual Sunday routine; not even through more persuasive effects such as some form of discontent or particular attraction; but through an awareness of belonging which is not restricted to the manmade and functional boundaries of parishes.

It is certainly not unusual to belong to, or to be involved in, more than one form of spiritual community today. As John Finney writes in his book ‘Emerging Evangelism’, this is an “important point which is likely to become more important with time. Many people are members of more than one community. It is possible to be a member of the Franciscan Third Order and also a member of the local church community. It is also already the case that many Christians look to their engagement with New Wine, Soul Survivor, a retreat centre or Walsingham as an important part of their spiritual life which goes alongside their membership of a local church.”

While not necessarily finding different facets of our spiritual (as well as social, psychological and emotional) needs catered for – as they may well be in combinations of involvement such as those mentioned above – through a lack of rigidity and exclusivity in our allegiance to a particular church or parish community, it does allow us to see ourselves more clearly as the essential individual building blocks of Christ’s Church. Nothing can alter or in any way dilute the fact that we are the Church. Those four words are some of the most important and relevant for every Christian today. ‘Church’ is the collective noun for a group of Christians: and for the worldwide body of all Christians. For as long as the varieties within Christianity remain expressions of fragmentation, divergence and disagreement, instead of the Spirit filled diversity which should be echoing the praise and worship of all man and womankind around the globe, Christian unity will continue to be a calling inseparable from our individual and collective calls to holiness. Quoting Archbishop Rowan Williams’ words, that church is “the community that happens when people meet the living Christ”, John Finney also points out that, ‘that should not be restricted to only one form of community, however hoary with history it may be.’

Recognizing ourselves as essential and equal parts of the body to which those calls are directed, is to know something powerful about ourselves. Each one of us is called to respond to that power from within: from within ourselves while within the Church. This is our calling; this is our place; this is our identity. We are not the docile, unquestioningly obedient and subservient space-fillers who are apparently essential to the Church’s continually increasing irrelevance in the eyes of so many of today’s people. We are essential as obedient, faithful and courageous members of the Church as it is meant to be: the Body of Christ. We follow, and are true to Christ. We should regard no other allegiance as being completely inflexible. We are God’s. We are not the priest’s, or the bishop’s, or the Pope’s. We are Christ’s. We are not the congregation’s, or the parish’s, or the diocese’s or the Church’s. We are a part of each of these tiers of community, no less and no more important than any other part. Without us these tiers, the community, and the Church itself does not exist.

Ultimately we are all there is. We are it. We are the Church. And that is not the terrifying thought that it may at first appear to be. We have only to see ourselves and the Church through the eyes and the mind of Christ. God’s Word is there for all to see, every day of our lives. And this is where we all need our priests to be the priests Christ is calling them to be. They are all included in that one all-encompassing ‘We’. They are not separated from it; they are not above it, or ahead of it. Nor are they at the centre of it by any appointment or form of recognition other than that received from God in their vocation; a calling confirmed and manifested through the respect, reverence, spiritual intimacy and true fellowship found in the needs of the people among whom they are called to minister.
 

 ‘Ministry is for all and those who are ordained have a special role and function. However, their ministry is validated and truly productive if they are affirmed and respected by those to whom and with whom they minister. Clergy, as I see this, only have a function within a local community that recognizes their ministry and gifts and is willing to share that ministry with them. ... Whether we have a high or low view of ordination, the body of Christ gives to all who are members an identity, a calling and gifts to offer for the good of all.’ (Alan Abernethy. Fulfilment and Frustration.)

We are back at the beginning, to know that place in ways that were previously impossible. We are conscious once again of being among The Named, as we were when I first wrote those words (06.01.07 … for the journey). –

 

'You have called me by my name. I hear you Lord.'

Poor as I am

Any degree of belief in God is the beginning of an awareness of His existence. Any awareness of God’s existence is an open door to an experience of His presence. Any experience of God’s presence will draw us closer to an encounter with Him. An encounter is something real, something undeniable, and something that challenges in some way. It deepens the impression made on us by the experience, and marks us indelibly in a way that may not become fully apparent until long after.

Christmas, for the most part, has always been a wonderful story for me: a story conveying the reality which is often all but buried beneath colour, wholly artificial light, extravagance, commercialism, and the excesses of celebrations which, while still being loosely associated, no longer feel as though they are truly connected with it. It has always been that story, but the process of belief becoming awareness, developing into experience, and transforming into encounter – a process with which I have become familiar in other parts of the story of Jesus – has never really begun for me in this, the quiet beginning of the whole Christian experience, available not only to true followers of Christ, or even to those in the far wider circle of people who call themselves Christians, but for all mankind.

But this year something was different. As in previous years, emotional involvement with the gospel narrative rose with my watching of any depiction of the story, but the BBC’s four part Nativity in the week before Christmas managed to deepen my involvement and to heighten my emotional response beyond the usual level. The final part left me disturbed to a degree that did not diminish until it was squeezed out by everything else going on around me; a diminishment I resisted but which completed its progress after four or five days of trying to find the mental space to engage with what had disturbed me. I longed for that engagement. In my own experience, such disturbance has always preceded a meaningful encounter, and running from the disturbing force, or even making no attempt to focus on it rather than striving to meet with it, would be denying much that the last twenty years has laid on me as the truth of my relationship with a living presence: the presence of He whose birth is the reality of the Christmas story.

My sense of involvement and disturbance was further heightened during the carol singing which preceded ‘midnight’ mass. As I had entered the church, my dipped finger had found “water like a stone” in the frozen font outside the door; though that description only came when those words were sung in the first verse of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’. But it was a question in that carol’s final verse that grasped me suddenly, firmly, and in a way that troubled me for those next few days. “What can I give Him, poor as I am?” The emotional involvement in the story increased further, and I was unable to shake the words from my mind. It happened to be my turn as Reader, and I kept the question at bay while at the lectern, but by the time I had to return there for the Bidding Prayers I could not deny the build-up of pressure within me; I knew I had to highlight those words for everyone else, not just for myself. I believe that all He wanted then, and still wants, is for us all to come to Him as ourselves: as who we really are; to shed all our masks, and pretences, and pride, and to approach Him as the persons we were made to be. Even as the new-born babe, He was, and is, longing for us to come to Him.

I had come to the church prepared for what I was expected to do, but perhaps I was a little too prepared. I had forgotten that we are not the ones who set the agenda; God’s agenda is the only one that matters. His presence as an infant had momentarily come as close to me as the companion who had walked with me years ago. It was a gentle encounter: a child to child encounter; it was a passing smile, as Joseph drew me closer to look on The Light in Mary’s arms rather than being content to hang back and simply believe that He was there. He had fleetingly enabled me to live the story through the eyes and the heart of the child who still lives in me.

Though sure I have been brought close to my answer, I continue to dwell on that question: –

“What can I give Him, poor as I am?”