5th March 2007
Another weekend teaching on the residential component of the training course for those preparing for authorised Christian ministry. The monastery were wonderfully welcoming despite being cocooned in scaffolding and busy with many guests. Good soup, humour, gentle interest and practical concern made me feel welcomed, wanted and an appreciated visitor. I took a copy of our Spirituality Module for the Guestmaster who had requested it after looking through it at our last residential. Encouraging to think that despite our differences, Roman Catholics can be interested in Anglican approaches to spirituality - and vice-versa. I wish we could have met and talked with the Roman Catholic Deacons in residence for their own course - past experience tells me we would have had much in common.
These times, when we gather in community as a learning group, are periods of palpable spiritual and emotional growth for us all as we exchange our stories, challenge one another's current thinking, and embrace emotional and intellectual growth.
The business of preparing candidates for life-long ministry in the service of the Church is a very inexact science. Although facts must be accrued and good practice assimilated, ultimately it is an alchemeic process. A blending in intense conditions; connecting, honing, questioning, reflecting and being held accountable by others.
This weekend has been no exception. We explored and meditated within a mini Lent. We used pebbles gathered from the shore to become transitional objects onto which we placed our burden - the worries or anxieties we were ready to give up to God. As the weekend progressed, we laid our pebble in a basket and we were invited to take a highly polished, smaller stone away with us, to home. A symbol of future hope; of transformation; a physical manifestation of a prayerful desire that the burden we had off-loaded on to the pebble will be resolved by God, and that we will be moved along on our own individual pilgrimages.
I had the very great honour of returning the burden-filled pebbles to the sea. As I carried them down to the shore this morning they felt like the sacred remains of the thoughts and prayers of our shared weekend. It was a profound and moving moment when, as the high tide approached, I stood at the water's edge and threw each stone, in turn, into the sea.
These stones carry the secrets of your servants' hearts. We return them to the elements that have held and honed them in the certain hope that you are present in our hearts and minds encouraging us to choose, always, the path of Life. Amen.
I was caught by the symbolism. A bright, glorious day. The scent of Spring in the air, surely a good few weeks too early for its own good, but clear and true never the less. New life in the air resonating with what we trust we will feel in our hearts. The hope of all that is to come.
I had much to be thankful for this weekend, so found that, unusually for me, as one of life's talented worriers, I did not have a specific burden to give to my God or invest in my pebble. This is as much a compliment to those who organised the worship as anything else. Considerable care was taken that as a visually-impaired tutor, I would have everything I needed to participate and feel comfortable. I was in celebratory mode as a consequence - it is not often I am so freed to worship. I often have a sense, as many disabled people do, of being a part of someone else's burden - as they care for me. Thank you, worship creators, for so gently and quietly making sure I was facilitated and included. I travelled light - in the literal and metaphorical pebble department all weekend as a consequence.
Saadi says:
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.
Or, my personal favourite as a stubborn beastie of significant proportions who believes in the power of encouragement:
By a sweet tongue and kindness, you can drag an elephant with a hair.
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