19th January 2007
I am writing this on the train to Perth, in Scotland. It's a shortish journey from my home in Inverness - a couple of hours or so.
Yesterday freak storms in England took the lives of ten people. I will remember those people - their families, colleagues and friends in the prayers in Chapel tonight at the monastery I am travelling to. Their lives were taken arbitarily because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I struggle with the randomness of life at times and how that fits with a faith in God.
The storm damage has closed many roads, destroyed property and brought some areas to a temporary standstill. With power lines down in Lancashire and flooding elsewhere, the news is full of stories about the heroic efforts of the emergency services and community minded individuals who are working to return everything to normal as quickly as possible.
It is as though if we can bury our dead, restore the power, clear the debris and mend the broken windows and damaged cars we can return to a lifestyle where we are largely anaethetised to the realities of global warming and the fair stewardship of the earth's resources.
In recent months there have been a number of stories about the colossal cost on the environment of China's phenomenal growth as a manufacturing super power. Somehow we neglected to report on our own uses and abuses of resources. In some deep sense it felt OK when we were exploiting the earth's natural resources because we were simply looking after our own; making sure we had enough.
Now, however much we might wish we could ignore it, the realities of environmental change are impacting at a level that we cannot help but notice. Migrating birds arriving and departing at unusual times. Animals hibernating for shorter periods. Daffodils in the garden, budding in December. Adverts reminding us to upgrade boilers and turn down heating.
Ironically, the changes we witness in our gardens or and in the landscape have made us more acutely aware of the extraordinary variety and delicacy of our eco-system. It is tempting to get caught up in the wonderful transformations and alterations - and forget the root cause.
Today I am travelling by train to attend a weekend residential course for a group of men and women training for authorised ministry in the Scottish Episcopal Church. We meet for five weekends in the year, and the rest of the time they continue their training week by week through placements at churches throughout Scotland; by meeting in small groups for reflection on what ministry is; and by continuing their academic studies in their sponsoring Dioceses. They travel into the monastery from all over Scotland. They are taught by tutors in Ministry, Liturgy and Spirituality - and then have some additional input on a theme which they often identify for themselves. This weekend we will welcome a speaker on The Psalms; hear about marriage and funeral rites used by the Church and think about what prayer is. The students are usually highly committed and focused. I hope this stays true while I am teaching them.
I love these weekends. They give me such a sense of hope for the on-going life and vision of the Church. Maybe my ears are particularly tuned to hear the negatives in the media about the Church - but there seem to be endless stories about how much the Church is declining in membership and as a spiritual and ethical influence.
Spending time with the current generation of ministers in training makes me realise that the Church is evolving, but it is far from declining. I sense that in years to come this period in our Church's life will be seen as a Reformation.
Our understanding of ourselves is being transformed by our access to technology, scientific advance, medical intervention, literature, art, music, money, travel and a lifestyle context that could only have been dreamed of a hundred - or even fifty years ago.
This has significant consequences in the sense that just like the Reformation in the sixteenth century, even with access to information at the press of a button, we are still taking a wee while to catch up intellectually and emotionally with each new opportunity and discovery available to us. This causes a very deep and real fatigue of the human spirit. It can feel like running up the down escalator of life.
No surprises then, that some people feel so challenged by what they read and experience that traditional Church values and practices seem alien or outmoded to them. They feel that they no longer speak to contemporary experience. They ridicule the place of religion in contemporary society and see it as intrinsically infantile and divisive. It's not so very shocking that others feel the need to hold on to what they see as ancient, unchanging truths; our early inheritance as a faith community. They speak of continuity, reminding us of a time when although life would not have been any simpler emotionally or spiritually, at least the world we inhabited would have been more contained. Hardly incredible then that within the Church there should also be those who embrace the ransforming influences in society and wish to see the new insights critically evaluated and deployed by the Church. They long to see the Church at the forefront of change and not with her hand resting constantly on the handbrake of past experience.
All these positions have significant aspects to commend them. Like a rope made of many strands, if the Church lost one of these influences she would be significantly less effective in the role she is called to fulfill.
I feel we shouldn't romanticise these strands however, in the sense that one holds rather more intrinsic truth or integrity than the others. None of them have a monopoly on insight or the Divine Will - although there would, I am sure, be proponents of each position who would claim unequivocally that they did. All of them bear 'the fruits of the spirit' in palpable and life-giving ways, but they are managed and made manifest through human assumptions and filters - and need therefore to be open to discussion, discernment and mutual accountability.
As an Episcopalian I have been formed in a Church which has prided itself on, at least until now, holding, however tenuously, to a degree of tolerance for, and commitment to, diversity. I don't think any Anglican in the Anglican Communion can say they are entirely comfortable with all aspects of their church and spiritual life in their denomination - and I am no exception.
Somehow I try and hold faith, I think, on reflection, primarily with three facets of being Church.
Firstly, I try and see the Church as a dynamic, provisional and divinely ordained Body, modelled on the minsitry of Jesus with the vocation of representing Jesus to the world, and therefore to each new generation. I see the Church as an incarnational presence in the world - using her eyes, ears, hands, feet, brain and heart to be alongside the poor and marginalized in society.
Secondly, like human bodies of tissue and bone, the Church is organic and shaped by the function (or dysfunctionality) of its parts in any given age. I therefore trust in "Thy will be done" - not mine - or even ours. Wherever the Church has functioned, she has attempted to reflect the gaze of God in her concern and preoccupations at that time. Sometimes she has been myopic; corrupted by power or driven by human egos - but she has also had periods when she has been counter-cultural, prophetic, subversive and been a lone voice for reform and political transformation.
Lastly, as a Church I believe we are in process. Although all things have been revealed for us to feel confident in the promises made by Jesus to humanity - the outworking of those promises in the world is still very much work in progress. It is taking time to create a Kingdom fit for God and for God's creation. As a keen painter I would say the paint will stay wet on the canvas for a wee while yet.
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