National Justice and Peace Conference
Swanick
21st to 23rd July
2006
THE DESERT WILL BLOOM
There are now three introductions to this presentation. We have just sung the hymn ‘One
Bread, One Body…’ – a lovely reflection on the
Eucharist. Unfortunately, for me,
it is totally ruined by a very ‘wicked man’ who happened to work
for the Bishops’ Conference when it was published. He came into the ‘common
room’ of the building and declared that the Bishops of
It is 10 years ago this month, July 1996, that I had the
privilege of sharing a platform with Rabbi Hugo Grynn. We were part of the Diocese of Arundel
and Brighton’s Diocesan Assembly, and he introduced himself by telling us
a story about an experience he had in
After the second quarter of an hour the interpreter spoke
around 7 words, after the third quarter of an hour spoke about 9 words and
after the final 15 minutes he managed 3 words. The Rabbi said he was totally
amazed and asked his host what the man had said. The host was very gracious about the
Rabbi’s speech and said what a fantastic interpreter he had, the best in
My real fear today is that I will say nothing new, that it is all so obvious. Indeed one of the things I actual do want to say is precisely that –there is nothing new to say. From the first moment in the Book of Genesis, the Spirit is within and among the chaos, the Spirit is hovering.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has a phrase: ‘There is nowhere in the world
where the writ of God does not run’.
The seeds are sown, the desert will bloom, we just have to learn to see, to listen, to read, to risk and to believe. Remember when we were kids and had ‘I Spy’ books, and you got 20 points if you saw a car drive off the end of a pier? I think we have to learn to spot the kingdom and the seeds of hope that are within, around and among us.
The mouse mat next to me as I type these notes is in the
shape of the Rosetta Stone in the British
Library. You may well know the story
of this amazing dark grey-pinkish granite stone. It has writing on it in two languages,
Egyptian and Greek, using three scripts – Hieroglyphic, Demotic Egyptian
and Greek. It was originally carved in the second century BC, but rediscovered
by Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard in July 1799 when Napoleon’s army was
in
The point is…it took over 20 years of scholarship to reveal what was already there. Scholars poured over the Greek text and gradually unlocked the meaning of the other languages, so that those languages in turn could reveal the meanings of other texts in other parts of the world. The meaning was there, the seeds were sown, we just had to learn to read.
I am absolutely certain that there are many people in this
room who can describe so much of the struggle faced by millions of our sisters
and brothers throughout the world.
Here among us there are experts in peacemaking, the care of people
living with HIV/AIDS, analysts on debt, aid, trade justice, the damage done by
mining extraction and so on. . We
are deeply concerned about the crisis in the
There is a very encouraging paragraph (64) in Pope Paul VI’s letter Populorum Progressio, (1967) when he says:
We are deeply
distressed by such a situation which is laden with threats for the future. We are, nonetheless, hopeful that a more
deeply felt need for collaboration, a heightened sense of unity, will finally
triumph over misunderstandings and selfishness .[1]
What we’re about here, this moment, is to reflect on the seeds of hope already planted, and discover some of the codes we need to read the runes.
The thread holding them altogether, I hope, is this simple fact that the Holy Spirit is present throughout, and that it is possible to glimpse and be vitally affirmed by this Spirit . I’m always struck by the fact that when Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb of Jesus, the place where she and others had put him, he wasn’t there. Mary couldn’t find Jesus where she had left him. Jesus was there, of course, and was presumed to be the gardener. I guess it is often true that we can’t find the Lord when we look for him, perhaps we just presume to know where we’ve left him. This is an invitation, everyday, to remember the last good thing to happen to us, and by all means go and look for it, but don’t be too surprised if it isn’t there. Perhaps turn around and chat to the gardener, glance at the next stranger, the invitation is to constantly look and discover something new.
The Father through the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, and put him somewhere else, i.e. – anywhere else. We can live in permanent hope, and we can live in permanent surprise that the Lord is with us, and, rather like Mary Magdalene, we may find him in the most unlikely places, and the most unusual disguises.
Unpredictable – a good word for the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the soil in which hope is embedded and rooted.
The Mary Magdalene experience in the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel, the search and the tears and the longing, and the strange phrase in English: ‘Don’t touch me’, possibly meaning: don’t hold me back’ I have to go elsewhere, to Galilee, you will find me there, I said I would be there, just don’t hold me back…’. We need to look somewhere new to find him – this helps us realise that we need good imagination.
Elizabeth Johnson describes the Spirit as one who ‘hovers like a great mother bird over her egg, to hatch the living order of the world out of primordial chaos.’[2] I suspect that some in this audience may find that kind of language difficult to handle. One of the tricks is to slow down, and listen to it for a while, don’t judge what you think it might mean. Live with it for a while, and then take longer to wonder about the image. Eggs are easily broken, and it may be that it is only when we crack, or our systems begin to creak and strain, and fall apart, that the Spirit has the chance and takes the opportunity to slip in and help us see things in a different way.
It may be that it is only when we crack that there is room for the spirit to slip in – but we do need the ‘con-fidence’, the faith in one another to support us when we are in the midst of it all. We need the faith that the Spirit is there within us. Wherever we go, within ourselves or anywhere else, God is there before us, the Spirit is there before us. That is God’s job, to love us, God has nothing else to do.
This phrase comes to mind from years ago, when I was much younger, - like in my 40s – and I go up to my parents house, and get it very late. Next morning my mother would ask me, inevitably, what time I’d got in, I’d say: ‘Late’. My mother would then say: ‘God love you’, and I’d reply: ‘She will, that’s her job, She’s got nothing else to do’. My mother would be so taken aback about the issue of the gender of God, that she’d forget about the row I was supposed to have about coming in late.
I think one of the ways into this discerning or discovering of the signs of hope, is to learn to listen - to really listen until it hurts. We are encouraged in our education system and in the world we live generally to come up with solutions and quick answers to things, this can militate against listening. It is hard to listen with fresh ears to people, to risk saying: ‘yes, let’s have a look at how that can happen’ rather than ‘well no, it looks complicated and it might not work…’
To be honest, I think it is particularly difficult for those in leadership to listen until it hurts. We often expect our leaders (religious or secular) to have solutions to problems, and our leaders develop the habit of listening while thinking rapidly about a solution. In other words, there’s only half listening going on. This is not just true of leaders, it is true of all of us. We all need to learn to listen to the pain of it, feel the struggle of it, pain is horrible when we’re on our own with it. We need someone to help dispel the loneliness of pain – this may be more important than a solution. People who truly listen to us, get close to us and what really matters. The trouble is, that takes time. It may also be that the Spirit doesn’t have the loudest voice. We won’t hear it if our heads are full of looking for answers to problems.
There’s a fascinating phrase in Mary Grey’s book Outrageous Pursuit of Hope, which reads: ‘The Spirit it watchful for the moment where the cracks in the discourses of violence appear, where humanity at last admits vulnerability in having no answers, and commits itself at last to a different kind of listening.’[3] We’re back to letting the Spirit in through the cracks, and to listen in a different kind of way. Back to this listening until it hurts, and then listening again. We are prone to want to solve things, to come up with fast answers and quick solutions - I wonder if men are more prone to this than women? However, the problem is often hidden behind the words. It is so important to feel that we’re not alone with the problem, so often the real problem is loneliness. Pain is so much worse when we’re alone with it. We need folk who are there with us in the midst of it.
I don’t particularly want to be drawn into the complex and painful discussions and arguments about ‘communion’ in and within the Anglican community. Nor do I want to contribute to the debate about the ordination of women bishops and the ordination of actively gay men in the Anglican Communion. I only want to wonder: ‘What is the Holy Spirit saying to us as Roman Catholics?’ I don’t know the answer to this. But its daft trying to find quick answers to this, they don’t work. We perhaps need to slow down, look more deeply into ourselves and our tradition and see how we feel about all sorts of things like sexuality, authority, tradition and many other vitally important issues.
I know that many people believe that these decisions put back the possibility of organic unity within the Christian family for ever. That may, in fact, be the case, we just don’t know – though I would hope not, and I don’t expect it to. . But, if we believe in the presence of the Spirit, and if we believe that the Holy Spirit doesn’t simply agree with how the Catholic Church happens to see, understand and proclaim things – and lets be honest, many Catholics do believe that they do have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit – then we must wonder what deeply and truly, the Spirit is saying to us. There must be hope in there somewhere.
The Spirit blows where the Spirit wills, who has the right to say that these debates and decisions are not reflecting the will of the Spirit in our time? At the very least, we are being invited to ponder that God’s ways may very well not be our ways and that God’s time is not our time. We are being invited to become much more deeply contemplative.
If you get the chance to walk past the chapel here, you
might like to read the Swanwick Declaration of 4 September 1987: We
commit ourselves to each other under God.
Our earnest desire is to become more fully, in his own time, the one
‘In God’s own time’. We are living in a messy time, and God is in the mess that is what the first line of Genesis is about.
One Sunday about a month ago we had the story in
Mark’s Gospel, of Jesus lying asleep on a cushion in the boat as he and
the disciples crossed the
The other is that we might need, however, to be woken up at some point. Now this is fascinating. It can be seen at so many levels. It may be that there is a part of our own being that needs to be awoken, a gift we have that is unused, a point at which we have to take the risk to act or speak out – something we haven’t done before…who knows, the Spirit will give us the opportunity if we tune in and listen and wonder.
Then again, it may be that a group within a parish have to be awoken by ‘someone or something from outside’. The disciples had to interrupt the sleeping Jesus. It may that someone within the Church has to wake us up. Who interrupts us from our slumbers? Is it our local asylum seekers, or the young people in our parish communities who are ‘on sabbatical’ from worship at present? To listen to others, to truly listen, is a sign of hope…it is to help calm, to prove that folk are not being left alone.
To push this image a little further, it may be that a diocese, or a national Church, or the Church as a whole is being invited to ‘wake up’ by someone, something, a movement from outside. That’s just too big for me. I’m just playing with the image, there is Jesus on the cushion. It is ok to sleep through the crisis, but who wakes us to become involved in what is going on? At least it is an interesting question: what are outsiders, the strangers, the unexpected inviting us to act on.
The Spirit is fascinating – inviting us to not become involved in everything that is going on, shouting off about every issue under the sun, and yet shaking us awake at some point when we need to become involved. How can we tell the difference? No good asking me, ask the Spirit, become contemplative.
I’m worried by people who go on about ‘building the Kingdom’ ‘working for the Kingdom’. I’m one of them, and they worry me. I’m just worried about whose Kingdom they/we think we’re building. It is so easy to presume that the Kingdom we’re building is God’s, and in fact it isn’t, it’s mine. Of course we can be convinced that our notion of the Kingdom and the reality of the Kingdom of the Lord are the same…scary.
There really is a difference between being prophetic and being a pain in whatever part of the anatomy you want to choose. Some people might not like this, but I don’t believe myself that there are ‘prophets’ in our world now, honestly, I don’t. Not Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, or whoever your hero or heroine happens to be. They weren’t prophets. There is no question that they did speak and act prophetically, but there is and always has been only one prophet and that is Jesus. Amos and Isaiah were called prophets – they were prophetic people. The reason for saying this is that we need to get to know the person of Jesus as closely and intimately in order to be prophetic, like him. To describe someone as ‘a prophet’ means that they’ve cracked it, and none of us have really cracked it. I’m teasing, playing with the idea. Listen a little longer, even though it might hurt.
However, I totally agree with Shay Cullen’s comments yesterday, particularly the first line…There is a prophet in every one of us. What the world needs now more than ever are the voices of prophets crying out like John the Baptist. Today’s prophets can be ordinary people like you and me, appealing for decency, and dignity for the marginalised and the abused. I totally agree with it, we all have some of it and some more than others. It’s not fair to presume that some are ‘prophetic’ all the time, there’s a danger then that we leave them at it and don’t always join in the struggle ourselves. The danger of a parish having a youth leader is that no one else does it (whatever it is)…we all need to come out and learn how to be prophetic. Who is going to wake us up and what are we going to do about it?
There is hope in this – in this willingness to listen, learn, take risks. Of course there is a really good chance that we’ll only recognise the Kingdom when we’re in it – and that isn’t just at the end of time, it is now, when we know we are loved and know that we love those around us.
Incidentally, I think it is just the same with the word ‘evil’. There are no ‘evil’ people; there cannot be such a thing as an ‘evil axis’. There are people who are capable of extraordinarily evil things and decisions – Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Tiglath Pileser III, Sennacerib, (you’ll find them in the Books of the Kings), most dictators and Emperors, etc. You see, rather like the word prophet, the word evil can be applied at different levels to absolutely everyone. We are all capable of being prophetic; we are all capable of being evil. Let’s not simply project the idea and the reality into certain people, we are all capable of it.
I think it is a sign of hope for us to become contemplative enough to identify within us (to use a phrase from the old Catechism) ‘the proneness’ within us to do that which is less than loving, evil or wicked, so that with the grace of God, gradually, we become more transparent, loving and hope-filled.
I’m just wondering about the phrase I used earlier about this amorphous group of people we call ‘young people’. How open are we to what they think, read, listen to, moan about or even say, if they actually say anything much at all? Have we listened to their apathy, their disillusion with institutionalised religion? To really listen to someone is to change, to have our world view challenged, severely threatened, or even expanded. Cardinal Hume used to say: ‘When I hear myself saying – ‘That will have to change’ – I know it means that I too, will have to change’
This may mean listening to different groups and different people and, like learning, there is a bereavement in this, we are having to let go something we’ve always presumed to be influenced by something new. I’ve lost the way I used to see it, and now I’m different.
I wonder if we’ve taken the opportunity to wander the streets of our cities where so many of our immigrants live? Have we listened to the smell of their food, the sound of their music, the colour of their dress, the fear in their eyes at this stranger among them?
Where is the hope in this listening? Well, there’s the possible beginning of new relationships and other ways of seeing things. A calmer, wiser appreciation of the world we live in. Appreciating the complexity of things as Helen Costigan invited us to yesterday regarding Ethical Investments.
A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. We don’t need bunches of fanatics, we do need people who are prepared to fall asleep at times in the midst of things, and we need people who are prepared to delve and wonder and query and question.
There is a Native American Indian proverb which goes along the lines of:
there are two wolves within us. One is wild and desires hate, revenge and destruction. The other is mild and desires peace, reconciliation and love. The one which triumphs is the one we feed.[4]
We can feed the wild wolf within us in so many ways – the people we choose to influence us, the questions we decline to explore, the prejudices we refuse to re-examine. We can feed the mild wolf through the listening, the wondering, the contemplating. At least, to some extent, we have a choice.
I recently read an article about two women from the
Hagit said: ‘It is women who will help to bring
peace in the
There is no doubt that they are feeding the mild, peace-loving, reconciling wolf within themselves and the communities they care about.
I think it is a good thing to cultivate the virtue of suspicion…this is a hopeful thing
to do. To wonder, what is the real
story behind the headlines. It is alright to ask questions. Really, there cannot be any questions
that cannot be answered. Sometimes
we’re afraid to ask questions, it can be frightening, to ask questions means
that we’re willing to let go some control, to be open to something
different. The next time you hear or read the story of St Peter in the
courtyard during the Passion of Jesus, just remember that he was afraid –
he lied – and the serving girls were suspicious. They knew he knew the
Bertrand Russell once remarked that: Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty.[6] There is no hope in superstition – all the superstitions in the world didn’t work for the England Football team, though they do seem to have done too much no harm to the Italians. And cruelty is a violation of power, a violent way of imposing the will of one person on another or others. There is no hope in cruelty either. But there is hope in questions and dialogue and the slow building up of relationship. Asking questions isn’t just words and talk; once again it is about listening and contemplation. T.S. Eliot’s words reinforce this in a more poetic way:
The endless cycle of ideas
and action.
Endless
invention, endless experiment,
Brings
knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge
of speech, but not of silence;
Brings knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.[7]
It is the Word that is the source of hope within us.
It is no wonder that Jesus so frequently uses the phrase: ‘Peace be with you’- when he meets people in complex circumstances, when the disciples were hiding in the upper room after the Resurrection. Peace is not the absence of conflict - it is more the absence of fear or confusion. When we contribute to the development of peace, - within ourselves, between ourselves or in our communities, we are contributing to the realisation of hope.
When I become aware of the rapidly increasing number of words written and spoken in the world – largely due to the development of the Internet – I’m left wondering if there is an equivalent increase in the amount of wisdom in the world. I suspect the jury is still out as to whether the Internet is indeed the ‘Information superhighway’ as it was once called, or the biggest possible graffiti board imaginable. How do we get into wisdom rather than just using words?
But what about Hope itself? What is it?
In the Introduction to his book Faith Works, JimWallis says: Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change…Faith makes hope possible[8]. Jim is implying that the way we see things, the vision we have of the world, the attitudes and approaches we develop all shape our choices and decisions. Faith is not just a noun, it’s a verb, it’s a ‘doing’ word. Faith a word that describes the way we make sense of things in relation to where we’re at. It isn’t simply a ‘religious’ term, though everyone here has a way of making sense of things which is inspired and influenced by our religious community and our religious commitment. That is a thought worthy of much more reflection.
What do we let, who do we let, help us make sense of things? For us it must push us back to the risen Christ, the communities shaped by the risen Christ and our belief in what the risen Christ can inspire us to do. Our faith shapes how we see things, directs and guides us, and ultimately, enables us make a contribution to whatever is going on around us. Hope is believing that we can live in a world of justice, love and peace. Hope is then watching things change around us. And things will change, because we are actively involved in shaping things around us. It is about envisaging and imaging a different world.
Hope is not just sitting and waiting. Actually, waiting is a very active business, it is about engaging totally in the present moment, contemplating the present, wondering about what is going on. Just think what you do at the bedside of someone suffering and dying – you are not ‘doing nothing’ - it is exhausting, you are totally immersed in the present moment – that is Advent, that is waiting. It is about being close to what is going on around us, it is not simply sitting about ‘doing nowt’. It is deeply contemplative.
If you log onto Sr Joan Chittester’s
website and read her fortnightly piece from wherever she is, you’ll see
the words: The Spirit we have, not the work we do, is what makes us important to
the people around us.
I was very struck early on the morning of Saturday 1
July. I turned on the Radio as soon
as I awoke, and heard the sound of a whistle being blown. I automatically presumed it was to do
with events later that afternoon in Gelsenkirchen, a twin town of Newcastle in
Germany, where England were playing their next (and final) world cup match. As
it happened, it had nothing to do with soccer. The whistle signalled the beginning of
the ceremony marking the 90th anniversary of the battle of the
Later in the day, in the centre of
(Incidentally, if I
can digress for a moment – if it is possible to digress during a reflection
like this…those of you who drive a car with the flag of the EU on the
number plate, the white stars on a blue background, may unwittingly be
acknowledging your belief in the Immaculate Conception. It is said that Jean Monnet, like any
decent Catholic, went to 6.00 am Mass one morning when he and his colleagues
were discussing the constitution and shape of the original treaty. And, like
any decent Catholic, he went to pray in front of Our Lady’s statue before
he left the Church. He noticed the
stars around the head of Mary, white, against a blue background – and
decided on the flag they would use….interesting. I’m so pleased that Dr Ian Paisley
is a convinced European)
Those men had a vision, their vision was enlightened by their faith. A question for us is: how is our faith enlightened? Who enlightens it?
The Last Supper, which we remember every time we celebrate mass together, was hope in crisis. In major crisis! The little community wasn’t so much shrinking as exploding. Judas had sold Jesus, and Peter was within 24 hours of totally denying him. Within a few hours, every one of Jesus (male) disciples had abandoned him. Mark tells us that one did a runner wearing nothing at all, the one who had given up everything to follow Jesus, now gave up everything to get away from him. If we can use the language – (by language I mean the word ‘church’) this was the biggest crisis in the history of the Church, by comparison, the ordination of actively gay people as bishops pales into insignificance. It was at this moment that Jesus made the most dramatic gesture in the history of the world: he took bread, broke it and gave it to them saying: He promised a future. ‘This is my body given for you and for all’. When the whole thing was falling apart, he made a gesture that promised a future. It took those present quite some time to get hold of the idea – within a few minutes there is a row among them about who is the most powerful, and Peter won’t have his feet washed. The gesture passed them by at that particular moment, it took time to sink in. That was the crisis of hope and that was the statement of hope.
So, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember this crisis of hope, and this promise of the Lord. The Last Supper was the last thing Jesus did before going down into the Garden to pray and be arrested. There is an urgency about the last supper. The last meals we have with people are etched in our memories. ‘Do this in memory of me’.
Hope is to optimism what memory is to nostalgia. Optimism is me wanting my own way. Hope is a willingness to contribute to changing things, together and to do that enlightened by the person of the Word. Memory is putting ‘members’ back on people, it is a moving word. Nostalgia is a sepia photograph that we want to get back to. We believe in hope and memory, rather than optimism and nostalgia.
Tim Radcliffe OP explores this idea in an excellent article entitled Kneading the Dough of the Eucharist in a book called Opening Up. He also says, in a couple of sentences which must be pertinent to us this weekend: An image that comes to mind is that of making bread. It is a tradition metaphor for the Christian community. In the Didache, one of the oldest Christian documents after the New Testament, we can find it already: As this broken bread, once dispersed over the hills, was brought together and became one loaf, so may thy Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom’. I must admit that I have never made bread.[9]
Tim goes on to say that he’d intended to learn to make
bread while on Sabbatical, but the nearest he got to it was watching Jamie
Oliver on TV. He then writes: it appears to involve constantly rolling
out the dough and gathering into the centre, and rolling it out again. Bread making involves a long process of
bringing the margins into the centre and then spreading the centre out into the
margins.
Now this is a master chef here who has never cooked a meal in his life – but that image is fascinating in the light of what Lucina has been doing over the last couple of days – preparing bread for the Eucharist, kneading and rolling, the margins into the centre. There is a huge need in the Church for people to be in touch with the margins and the centre and enable them to speak to each other, learn from each other, listen to each other and love each other – a big task indeed.
So, where are these seeds, signs of hope? Wonderful to hear the reflection on candles last night during our evening liturgy….
In the Merchant of Venice, Portia says: How
far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty
world.
That line, in turn, reminds me of the short poem by Kim chi
Ha – from
When I light a candle at midnight
I say to the darkness
I beg to differ.
Seeds and signs of hope don’t have to be massive they can be very small. There is something here about little signs, little hints, little gestures
Last Sunday morning, in
I am reminded of the famous phrase of Vaclav Havel,
playwright and previous President of the
I’m a great believer that God works through small
signs, the welcome and hospitality of one parish to the ‘stranger’
– and this is replicated in so many parishes in
I wonder if the most radical thing we can do to identify the
seeds of hope in our graced and redeemed world is to pray, to ponder, to
contemplate. A previous Archbishop
of Canterbury, William Temple used to say:
When I pray, coincidences
happen. When I do not pray, they do
not happen. [11]
I suggest that when I pray, I see signs of hope all around me, when I do not pray, I see very little. The silent prayer of Jesus is a key theme in our Sunday Gospel this weekend. And before you say to yourself – oh, typical priest, back to praying about everything and that’s it…well, I’d like to say two things. 1 – fine, just do it….2 Let’s listen to a great paragraph by Henri Nowen in what I think was his best book, entitled Compassion. He wrote it with 3 other people, and says this:
Prayer is the very
beat of a compassionate heart. To
pray for a friend who is ill, for a student who is depressed, for a teacher who
is in conflict; for people in prisons, in hospitals, on battlefields; for those
who are victims of injustice, who are hungry, poor and without shelter; for
those who risk their career, their health, and even their life in the struggle
for social justice; for leaders of church and state – to pray for all
these people is not a futile effort to influence God’s will, but a
hospitable gesture by which we invite our neighbours into the centre of our
hearts.
To pray for others
means to allow their pains and sufferings, their anxieties and loneliness,
their confusion and fears to resound in our innermost selves. To pray, therefore, is to become those for whom we pray, to become the sick child, the
fearful mother, the distressed father, the nervous teenager, the angry student
and the frustrated striker. To pray
is to enter into a deep inner solidarity with our
fellow human beings so that in and through us they can be touched by the
healing power of God’s Spirit.
When, as disciples of Jesus, we are able to bear the burdens of our
sisters and brothers, to be marked with their wounds, and even be broken by
their sins, our prayer becomes their prayer, our cry for mercy becomes their
cry[12].
Prayer is the beat of a compassionate heart. It is a huge commitment to hospitality, to welcoming people in. We are changed by it, because we’re changed by it, we envisage things differently, because we envisage things differently we make different choices. Because we make different choices, the world changes. Because we are wiling to let all these things influence us then prayer is a way of entering into a culture and sign of hope. This is made flesh and blood in the Eucharist. There cannot be anything more hopeful than that. In prayer we build community, we share each others joys and sorrows, and at the bottom of it all, we occasionally glimpse the guidance of God in the midst of it all.
The next radical thing we can do is re-think how we celebrate the Sacraments of the Church. I’ve mentioned the Last Supper, the Eucharist, but the more we appreciate that all the sacraments are signs of hope, signs of the presence of risen Christ among us, the more we will come to see that they are about community and acceptance. I know you can give me a really hard time about ‘everybody’s welcome’ – when they’re clearly not! At least they’re not at the Eucharist.
I’ll now miss out the next 15 pages prepared about all the Sacraments as signs of hope and signs of community…it would just take too long.
The Church is not the Kingdom, but it is hopefully a sign of
the Kingdom, a hint at what the
An interesting little thought from Tony Ashcroft, a priest
in the diocese of
If
Lucina invited us to think about the woman ‘taken in adultery’ in John 8. Let us begin a reflection with that situation:
When the Pharisees saw a woman taken in adultery – Jesus saw a daughter of God.?
The crowd saw a woman with a haemorage – Jesus saw a daughter of God
Jairus saw his dead daughter – Jesus saw a daughter of God
The villagers saw a possessed man, chained up in a cemetery, lacerated skin, in the presence of pigs. Jesus saw a son of God.
The villagers saw a tax-collector, Jesus saw a disciple.
Jesus saw a bunch of fishermen – Jesus saw a bunch of Apostles
If we pray for people, we learn to see things
differently. We cannot pray for people and see them in the same way afterwards,
because we see them differently.
There must be something hopeful in that – that is scary….
In conclusion, an incidentally, never use the word ‘finally’ in a talk, just in case you use it twice, and if you use it twice, the audience, those who are still conscious, cannot know that you won’t use it 10 times, and at that point, they will lose the will to live.
So, in conclusion , I’m perfectly sure that I haven’t answered the question – if there ever was a question in the first place. At least I have done what I said I would do, namely, spread ideas, thoughts and reflections at random around the place. And as the Japanese interpreter said: I knew this man would say nothing new.
Thank you.
REFLECTION
8.45 p.m Friday 21 July
Welcome………………..
There is one thing that really disappoints me about this particular Conference Centre – and it’s that the ‘Play Area’ is restricted to those under the age of 12 - I just feel excluded.
Thank you to all those responsible for bringing us together this evening and over this weekend. There has been a phenomenal amount of work gone into gathering us together ,and we need to acknowledge this and thank those for bringing us here.
This is a unique gathering, this group of people has never, ever, been together before. There is something grace-filled about that. This is a graced moment. The grace of this moment will be evident.
One of my favourite stories in the New Testament is in Acts
8. There is Philip on his way from
Now what fascinates me about this story is that the
following weekend, and this bit isn’t actually written down in the Book
of Acts, it was missed out, Luke forgot to mention it, so I made it up, there
is our friend the Ethiopian Eunuch up in Thyatira. After he was baptised, he thought it was
better to not go down through
Now it is utterly unimaginable for our friend the Ethiopian
eunuch and the wealthy
What a brilliant moment. Two folk from
seriously different backgrounds, welcome and at home at the celebration of the
Eucharist. Here we are, from
all over
Those of you
know who anything about me at all, know that I am in a foreign land in a
kitchen In the presbytery where I live, there is one
of the best presbyteries in the Diocese p-thanks to my predecessor – who
knew what he was doing there. I suggested to him that he take it with him when
he went off to pastures new.
So – the business of breaking bread is a total mystery to me.
I have no idea what to do in kitchens. they frighten me. You’re more than welcome in the house where I live, but the kettle is about the limit of my cooking ability.
I’m delighted to say that I’m in the same boat as Tim Radcliffe who wanted to learn to make bread on his sabbatical. He ended up watching Jamie Oliver making bread on one of his TV; programmes.
I am fascinated by this theme chosen by Lucina, the whole experience of making bread. Obviously I’ve never done it in my life, and I don’t suppose, sadly, I ever will. I might just say more about this on Sunday morning. But I am taken by this paragraph I read some years ago in a book called: The Poet The Warrior The Prophet by Ruben Alves. He says:
Kitchen is a place of
transformations. Nothing is allowed
to remain the same. Fire and its
allies are at work…Things come in raw, as nature ;
produced them. And they go out
different, according to the demands of pleasure. The hard must be softened. Smells and
tastes which were dormant inside are forced to come out: cooking is to give the magic kiss which
wakes up sleeping pleasures. Alchemy, metamorphoses; cooking joins what nature has
separated. Space is abolished.
Salt, garlic, pepper, sugar, thyme, clove, parsley, oregano, cinnamon, paprika,
cumin, celery, sage, tarragon, horseradish, curry powder, they are all invited,
from distant lands where they grow, to join the festival of cooking. The sweet, the sour, the bitter and the
salty are forced to enter into non-existent combinations. Everything is a new creature, everything
is made anew.[14]
Even I can appreciate and delight in that. It is as if each one of us is invited to be an ingredient in a meal. There will be tensions and difficulties, conflicts, complexity and blending, edges will be knocked off, - but that is what happens at weekends like these when people come together at graced times. Everyone has a contribution to make – but I guess that is normal in cooking. Ther will be argument and give and take. There will be blending, there will be edges knocked off, and some times it is really hot! Believe me, I have no idea about cooking, but I do have some experience of living in community – I guess it isn’t that different…I’ve little idea of family life – but I guess it isn’t that different either,,,,
Isn’t that brilliant. The invitation to us, over this weekend, is to be like an ingredient in a wonderful meal. We all bring something unique and different, a different taste, insight, smell, texture. Some of us are leaven, some are good, solid heat of the day proper meat and two vedge. ~We all have a contribution. We can learn to blend, change, suffuse with others, - and at the end of the day, or the end of the weekend, we can be different, more supported, more encouraged, more enthused and affirmed in our work for peace and justice in our parishes, country and this amazing global village we happen to live in for a few years.
There are numerous workshops, which will offer us the
opportunity to learn, to see things differently. To be honest, there’s not much
sense in going to any workshop, lecture, discussion or conversation with the
attitude….I’ve got this
sorted…there is great grace and great hope if we go with a spirit of wonderment.
Learning is like ‘bereavement’- there should be a sign outside every library saying: ‘blessed are those who mourn’.. I reckon what this means is ‘Those people are special in our community who are willing to be close to those who are willing to see things in new ways – whether the ‘new’ is without our deepest lover, or our way of seeing things upto now. I’ve just discovered that Thomas Aquinas reckoned that ‘Blessed are those who mourn …’ is the Beatitude for those who teach and wonder about these things…
I’m always taken by the very simple phrase at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel where it says in the first chapter, verse 12: Immediately afterwards (after his Baptism), the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness…
There is Jesus being driven by the Holy Spirit, into the desert, no ‘by you leave’, more ‘you’re off, into it’. Now we’ve all been in places of bewilderment – places of confusion, depression, uncertainty, anger, places where we are just not in control. They are not happy places to be. But the deal is, the Spirit has drawn us into them, has even driven us into them. We have not been abandoned, we have been severely tested.
This weekend we are invited to ponder where there are seeds of hope in our world. Where the Spirit is leading us
What I’ve prepared to say has been written over the last few days – that’s what I’m like. One of our previous bishops, Hugh Lindsay, used to say: ‘If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done’ – I have some sympathy with that. But I have been thinking and wondering, scribbling and talking about it for about six months. I began by spending a few minutes at the end of each day writing down what I saw as ‘signs of hope’ over the previous 24 hours. Let me give you some examples – and to be honest, it has been a really good thing to do. If you’re into Jesuit stuff – the Examen and that, this is very similar, without the serious bits. Just play a video (or DVD, these days, I guess) of the day, and wonder – where is the hope? These are some of the things I wrote down.
My (middle) niece has gone to
Ged Lee rang me to tell me he’d found my house keys – a priest of the diocese, my class, found my keys in his car park after a meeting about Regeneration – neither of us could spell the word.
The gathering around Grey’s Monument a couple of weeks ago in Newcastle, celebrating last year’s G8 and urging the keeping of promises.
Our Diocesan CAFOD pilgrimage to
Michael – aged 4, covered in mud, simply enjoying the fullness of life…that is real hope.
Learning something from my youngest niece about dress sense. I know this is a major problem, and I don’t take it too seriously, but it is fascinating to go shopping with her and to admire her totally confident sense of what works.
The big stuff
like national leaders still taking
My oldest niece making a film with year 5 in her school about Fair Trade.
These signs of hope don’t have to be earth shattering,
they just have to be signs of hope.. There’s no substitute for you
sitting alone, under your tree, in your armchair, cross legged on the floor, replaying
the tape of the day, and asking the Lord to reveal to you what signs of hope
you have missed. We have to learn
to see and hear and read in a different way. I
challenge you to keep a diary after this conference to keep a diary for only
two weeks – every day – to note the signs of hope you see in your
life – you might be surprised, delighted and affirmed. If you aren’t then try a bit
longer, because we believe in a God of relationship who is intimately involved
in our human lives (why else be born in a stable) – the signs are there,
we need to learn to see them
We don’t have too long together, but I’m certain that the Holy Spirit will guide all of us to see things differently, become more courageous, learn to contemplate and ponder, learn to pray and wonder, learn to celebrate and get excited about what we are about.
The big thing is, to enjoy being together and listen to each other. Not much else matters.
[1] Pope Paul VI Populorum Progressio 1967 CTS para
64 p 31
[2] E. Johnson, She Who Is,
[3] M
Grey. Outrageous Pursuit of Hope, p.72
[4] Quoted
by Rev Stephen McLouglin. Prayer for the Day. Radio 4. 8 June 2006
[5] Movers and
Shakers. Jewish Renaissance. Vol 5 Issue 3, p2. April 2006
[6] B. Russell. Quoted in Bible Alive. 30th June, p46.
June 2006
[7] T.S. Eliot. Collected Poems 1909 – 1935 Choruses from The Rock Faber
p157
[8] J. Wallis Faith Works SPCK
2002 p xxii
[9] T Radcliffe Kneading the Bread of the Eucharist, in
Opening Up DLT 2005 ed Julian Filochowski and Peter
Stanford p 13.
[10] Quoted in T. Radcliffe
What is the Point of Being a Christian? Burns
and Oates 2005 p17
[11] Quoted in D Adam Aidan Cuthbert Bede’ SPCK 2006 p13
[12] Henri J.M Nouwen Compassion DLT 1982 p 109
[13] T. Ashcroft quoted in PRE Spring 2006
[14] Rubem A. Alves The
Poet The Warrior The Prophet SCM 1990
p 79