Christian Community and the Sick

When I first heard about the Community of St Anselm, the new community of prayer being established at Lambeth Palace for people aged 20-35 to “spend a year in God's time”, I was terribly excited and ready to sign up right away. I have been increasingly interested in the ideas around community for some years now and the practises of regular prayer through the day, although I have been less successful always in establishing that discipline at home on my own. It sounds like a fantastic opportunity to grow, learn and experience God. Most of all I thought, “imagine not being lonely for a whole year, not being a Christian alone, being with other Christians”. Being sick, unable to work and coming from a non-Christian family has been intensely lonely, both from a general point of view and from a specifically Christian point of view.

But then reality kicked in, the reality that this community needed energetic people, it was there in the language of discipline, rigour, discomfort and hard work. The reality that someone like me would never keep up for a week, let alone a year. The reality that being around people can be draining. The reality that being chronically ill has made me something of a hermit, unable to be around people, too tired to take part in so many things, not a willing hermit, but one because of circumstance.

My natural reaction to this is to be thoroughly fed up at seeing yet another opportunity go out of my reach, being shut out again because I have no energy to be busy and active, feeling useless yet again. Yet although these feelings are valid and need expressing, it does not have to end here does it? So I cannot be part of this community? It does not mean that I and others like me are shut out of all expressions of community?

I hate to think of there being others out there like me, each isolated from the wider church, feeling outside and being unable to connect with one another. Although things are easier now, I have been through times of intense isolation and still feel too isolated from and out of step with other Christians my own age, and I cannot be the only person in a similar situation? Beginning to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together has provided a challenging view of community and I have been especially struck by his view that to live in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ is a privilege.

“So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God's Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went 'with the multitude... to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday' (Ps. 42.4). But they remain alone in far countries, a scattered seed according to God's will. Yet what is denied them in actual experience they seize upon more fervently in faith.”

So community is not only a privilege, but also a prophetic way of living that foretells the way things will be on the new earth. However, as we are still being remade and are not yet fully perfected, living out this calling is a tremendous challenge as we need to be able to leave behind our own needs, priorities and concerns in order to love one another and live together in harmony. Do the demands that illness make upon my body leave enough energy and strength for this challenge?

In myself certainly no, but in God's grace and with His help who knows what may be possible, always bearing in mind that as things stand I am not healed. Therefore maybe my challenge is to consider other means of living in a degree of community, looking for a way for people like me, who are shut out because of sickness, to come together for fellowship, be it virtual or visible? Prayer is one of the few things you can still do when you have next to no energy, so there is no reason for the sick to be shut out of Archbishop Justin's call to prayer, but the challenge is to find ways of enjoying the privilege and blessing of praying with others. Paradoxically this illness has been the means by which I have learnt to value prayer and to rely on God in prayer, because I have fewer of my own resources. I have learnt that prayer takes incredible perseverance, some days just concentrating enough is a massive struggle and of course there are days when the prayer is the simple, primeval, “help!” and no more. God is gracious and helps me when I ask Him to help me with prayer and reading the Bible. But being able to come together with other Christians daily for prayer continues to be something I dream about.

It seems, therefore, that I will be sitting out the Community of St Anselm, but perhaps it can prompt me to fresh thinking about community and its different forms? And of course I can pray, for the Community itself, for the wider church and that we can find a way for people like me to take part in a community of fellowship and encouragement, virtual and face to face. I have no idea what form this will take or what it will look like, or even if it will happen, but for now I will keep reading, praying, hoping and waiting on God.

The Year in Books: July

Again, scraping in close to the wire, partly this month because for most of the month there was no one book that grabbed me and that I felt I had to write about.  That is not to say there have not been some good books, such as Janet Frame's first collection of short stories, an anthology of comic stories, H G Wells' engaging but slightly strange book Marriage or the ever delightful Psmith.  Instead I have decided on a book I am only half way through: God on Mute: Engaging in the Silence of Unanswered Prayer by Pete Grieg, recommended to me by a friend as I have struggled with prayer for quite a time now.  I often struggle to want to pray and I find myself worrying about prayer, particularly in light of all the terrible things happening around the world.  Or I end up feeling that as prayer is one of the few things I can do, I ought to be doing it more or "trying harder".

God on Mute is a book about faith, about prayer, specifically grappling with unanswered prayer and why our prayers might not be answered.  Pete Grieg set up the 24/7 Prayer network and in his own life has had serious struggles and unanswered prayers meaning he writes with power and from personal experience.  Pete Grieg combines this personal material with solid theology, presented in an accessible way and structured loosely around the narrative of Maundy Thursday to Resurrection Sunday.  Some of what it has to say is not necessarily what we want to hear about prayer and about God, but it is what we need to hear.

I cannot fully write about this book or do it justice: God on Mute is honest, godly, transformative.  I am only part way through the book but already feel freer, less worried, with an increased understanding of prayer, how wrestling with prayer can draw us closer to God.  How suffering does not mean we have done something wrong, but that suffering and persisting in prayer through the hard times can draw us closer to God.  It is so refreshing to read a modern Christian writer affirm that life is hard, but God is good.  The world is broken, life is hard, but that is not the end of the story: God is with us, Jesus died and was buried and rose again so that one day things can be different, the battle may rage around us, but the war, ultimately is won.

If you want a taster of Pete Grieg's teaching on unanswered prayer he has recently done a sermon on the subject at his church, which is well worth a listen (also available as a podcast).  Then go and buy a copy of the book, I am thinking of buying at least one more copy so I can start lending it round.

To see the rest of the year in books entries for July click here

A Time of Contrasts

The news lately has been abundantly dark, full of the terrible things we humans do to one another and I admit I have been finding it hard to deal with at times.  I pray and try not to brood or become utterly overwhelmed and it feels so little.

Meanwhile in the garden the summer continues oblivious, as it as always done, the borders a tangle of blooms and lush green.  It is, as the wonderful writer Ronald Blythe has noted, a growing year: young trees have shot up a foot or more, the roses reach for the sky, the sole remaining raspberry cane performs hitherto unheard of feats and the ceanothus and holly attempt to meet from their separate sides of the lawn.



To sit in the garden and appreciate its beauty as it hums and twitters and flutters with wildlife seems indulgent, inappropriate somehow, like I should not be enjoying that moment when others were suffering so much.  But what does it profit anybody if I did not enjoy that moment, since there is nothing I can do as I am to change matters, once I have prayed and prayed again?





Also thank you for your comments to my last post, try as I might, I cannot get blogger to let me reply, but I do very much appreciate what you have said.

Easter hope

I have not had that much to say lately, I have been going through a bit of a bad patch and been really down at times.  Together with horrible panic attacks at night and the lack of sleep that follows from that, life has not felt like much fun.  I have struggled with my faith too, it is not that I do not believe, not that at all, I still believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Bible, that it is all true.  But more I have been struggling with me in relation to God, struggling to see past the bad in me, struggling to cope with myself and my inadequacy and why God would ever want anything to do with me.  Struggling with grace I suppose, again.

So Easter has been a precious reminder of what Jesus has done for us, that He has taken our sin and takes it afresh every day, so that we can go to the Father.  Today I feel a renewal of hope because Jesus has died for us and has risen and stone is rolled away and the tomb is empty and so everything is possible.  I will still make mistakes today and tomorrow and the day after, I am not perfect in myself and never can be, but through Christ, in God's eyes I am and I am loved and accepted.  How to take in this truth, to understand it and live out that truth?

A couple of songs have been helping me along this path, one is from an album reviewed on a university friend's blog, by a band called Page CXVI and is called Roll Away the Stone, I love the chorus:

Roll away roll away the stone!
Where he lay, where he lays no more
Risen and victorious radiant and glorious
He rose amen He broke the chains of sin

And Boldly I Approach by Rend Collective, a meditation on Hebrews 4.16: "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."



I hope they help you enjoy God's grace anew this Easter.  Life has been hard, it will be hard again, but we all need a reminder of the truth to show us that this is not all, that there is a hope to come.  It is a relief to be able to remember God's grace despite not having been able to go to church as I would love to do and amid all the other frustrations of my life.  I do not know what is next or where I should be going but for now I will try to rest with God and remember that the Easter message, "That there is now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ."

Sunset on Good Friday

Musical Interlude

Following various recent conversations with friends I have realised that by listening almost exclusively to Christian music, as it helps my mental health, I have gained knowledge about bands that others have not heard of, so I thought I would write a few blog posts about some of my favourite bands or musicians.

And so we start with the band who came to mind immediately when thinking about this and the band to whom I have recently introduced various people from my church: Rend Collective Experiment.

They are a band from Northern Ireland whose music is largely folk inspired, but who use a wide range of instruments and styles for their songs.  They have a refreshing originality and energy and get away from the "cheesy" reputation that so often haunts Christian music.  In their music there is a real mixture of tempos and volumes, traditional hymns and original songs, around the theme of discipleship and church.  As they themselves acknowledge, folk music is accessible, anyone can join in by tapping their foot or singing along or clapping their hands and that makes it brilliant music for the church, and an echo of the church being an inclusive place that anyone can join.  But they put it better themselves:



I discovered them on Spotify and have loved their music ever since the first few chords of the first song of their first album, Come on my Soul, it is a simple song, calling us to worship, reminding us to look up from ourselves to Jesus and God our Father.  I love the video they made for this song too, the gathering of the church around the light.



Meanwhile the song that has become their anthem is Build Your Kingdom Here.  It is the most phenomenal prayer and a bold vision and I pray it regularly as I walk through my local town centre.  The chorus speaks for itself:

Build your kingdom here
Let the darkness fear
Show your mighty hand
Heal our streets and land
Set your church on fire
Win this nation back
Change the atmosphere
Build your kingdom here
We pray

They have so many other awesome songs, including a fantastic, intimate version of Love Divine All Loves Excelling and Second Chance, a song which gives me so much hope when I fail.  I admit that their albums are generally on my ipod on repeat and I never tire of them.  Go have a listen and may God use this music to bless you.

Facing failure

Some days, some weeks even, I feel like a failure: an utter, miserable, lowest of the low, out and out failure.  Now is one of those times.  Life seems dismal, I feel frustrated by my own ability to make the same mistakes again and again and I feel stuck.  Prayer is hard, a fight and a battle, to focus, to find the words, even sitting quietly before God is a challenge.  I find myself not wanting to pray, which is a feeling I hate.  I hate that I do not want to spend time with God and hate how that must make Him feel.  The world seems like a bleak place and change seems impossible.

I am trying to persevere, as the Bible urges us to again and again, but it feels so hard and yet in saying that I feel like such a wimp.  Surely I knew before I began that following Jesus was hard?  He warns of it, "Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10) and "In this world you will have trouble." (John 16).  So why do I moan and whine and protest when things are hard?

I find it so hard to put aside my pride and admit that I cannot do this on my own, to accept my own inadequacy and that ultimately I cannot save myself.  It is at this point that I turn again to Jesus, to the cross, to give in to grace, something so simple, yet so hard.

But I still admit that I cannot yet rejoice in trials and sufferings, although I can overall see the good that has been coming out of the hard times.  Sometimes the hard times are when I am closest to God, but the hardest hard times are when I find it hard to approach God and when my sense of failure becomes overwhelming.

Father help me to persevere.
Forgive me my failings.
Thank you for the cross.
Help me.
Help me to find strength in my weakness.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12) 

52 Weeks of Happy - week 6

Six weeks into this 52 weeks of happy, goodness me, never thought I'd last this far.  It has not been a bad week, not too bad anyhow, although I have been struggling to relax and sleep.  I keep meaning to write other blog posts and they keep not happening.  Today I do not feel especially positive, so coming up with four things to be positive about is a good exercise, hopefully it will help my head see that there are positive things going on, help me not to miss them.

1. A kind thought and a great quotation - a kind friend sent me a lovely cotton bag she had got on a weekend away in Sheffield, with the following quotation on it "It is impossible to be angry when looking at a penguin", from of all people, John Ruskin.  I would love to know what the origin is of this statement, I had always associated Mr Ruskin with serious matters, not penguins.  The bag has two rather gorgeous penguins following in one another's footsteps and it put a big smile on my face.  Naturally it already has some knitting in it.



2. Cabin Pressure - the radio 4 show, which each week keeps me in stitches, laughing so hard the whole house can hear, if not next door as well.  John Finnemore is a brilliant writer, mixing wordplay, situation and plain silliness into a superb and closely packed half hour.  Go and listen on iplayer while you can - the last in the series is next Wednesday at 6.30.  I realise now that I should have mentioned this sooner, before the series was nearly over, however, you can catch up with the previous series on audible most reasonably.

3. Continuing promise of spring - the buds on our wild cherry twigs are breaking and gorgeous green leaves emerging, hopefully there will soon be flowers.  They are rather hard to photograph though.



4. Prayer - I would not have made it through the week without prayer, both mine and other people's.  Sometimes it is talking things over, sometimes sitting in peace, with some liturgy in between.  Prayer helps me to keep my stress and anxiety levels manageable, my mood more stable, and helps me and others in so many ways.  I am so grateful to God for this gift and that He cares about us and our daily lives, that He is interested and wants to hear from us, no matter how small or big the problem.  Through prayer God is teaching me to rely on Him and how infinitely gracious He is.  For example, if I cannot find something I try to remember to pray, before tearing the house apart looking, as I find searching for things so tiring and they do generally appear after I have prayed, sometimes almost at once, sometimes a little while later, but they do.  Through watching Him answer prayers on a small scale I find I can learn to trust Him more for the big things.

Prayer also helps me to feel less useless within the church - I may not be able to do much else for my church and for the wider church, but I can pray.  It is so good to have others pray for me too, sometimes it is easier to pray for someone else than it is for yourself and in the past a good friend and I have arranged to pray for one another that day rather than struggle with prayer for ourselves.  I love how God equips us to help one another and love one another.

Time to try to relax and get some sleep now I suppose.

What I pray my church will be

Recently while praying for my church I scribbled down a list of attributes I pray my church and the church more widely will have and will further develop, suitably enough on the back of an envelope.  Then I lost the envelope for a few weeks'.

As I have now found it again I thought I would post the list here, in the order in which I wrote it down, in the hopes that it would prove helpful to you as you pray for your church and our church.  Of course the list is not comprehensive, but I hope and pray it can be a place to start from.  I dearly love the church, it is a wonderful concept, the body of Christ, a series of loving relationships changing the world, working through the world like yeast through flour, to make all things new.

Let us pray.


What I pray my church will be:

Founded in Christ – our sure foundation

welcoming, open

a window on another world

learning from the past but not bound by it

preaching the Gospel
boasting in Christ crucified

loving

discipling one another

one as He is one

of pure heart

full of joy in Him

a lamp on a lampstand, a city on a hill, shining for all to see

full of peace

fellowship

different

genuine

a place of healing

a place of prayer for all the nations

Amen.

I will leave you with this song I discovered yesterday, which is a tremendous encouragement to pray.

Monk, not Thelonious

Life with Jesus can contain surprises; you think of yourself as a certain sort of person, or certain sort of Christian, then find yourself doing or becoming someone different. Not changing who you are entirely, still being yourself, but doing things differently.

Lately in my life the change has been liturgy. I started off as a Christian in churches with no or minimal liturgy; it was something fairly dull and meaningless we had recited at school, something old and fusty, not me at all. Then I found myself going to an Anglican church, re-encountering liturgy, getting occasional glimpses of the sense of oneness it brought to us all as we prayed as one, but still not sure about it on the whole. Gradually as I have got used to the form of the service of Home Communion I have grown to love it, the reminders of who we are and who God is and how we relate.

So recently, while searching for ways to pray more regularly and with more discipline I decided to take a look at the Northumbria Community's website to see if they had any resources which might help me and there I found their daily offices, the prayers they say daily which form the rhythm of their daily life. I went to them because of what a friend from university, whose parents live there, had told me about it and because I had been impressed by the sense of peace that radiated from his parents when I had met them. Initially when I had been praying about how to pray, which sounds odd, but made sense at the time, I thought perhaps I would experiment with some different methods and types of prayer, but since I started praying the daily offices about a week and a half ago I have not stopped, neither do I want to.

Praying the morning and evening prayer (I have not yet managed to fit in the midday prayer), though sometimes at odd times, has given me a rhythm of times when I stop and spend time with God. The words are growing on me, helping ingrain Jesus and God's promises within me, reminding me of them and giving me a structure for the times I spend with God. There is space for my own prayers and short, digestible Bible readings. After I have prayed the morning or evening office I feel peaceful and calm, it is strengthening my ability to see things with the eyes of faith and not feel so overwhelmed by the world around me.

Most immediately helpful has been Compline, the short prayer said last thing in the evening. Since starting to say this prayer I have found that I have had fewer problems getting to sleep, which is a real relief. There is a different one for each day of the week, but they centre around praying for God's peace as we sleep, something I always need.

I am grateful to God for the generous gift the Northumbria Community have made in sharing their Daily Offices and also that He has helped me gain the discipline of following them, I pray I may continue to grow and develop in prayer. None of this has come easily so far, I have been asking God, in my somewhat haphazard prayer, fitted in among and during other things, that I might pray better and spend more time with Him for quite a while. It is well worth persisting in prayer, even if it does not immediately appear to be answered, keep asking and trusting.

And so on with the adventure and change.

Here is one of my favourite parts of the morning prayer, to give you a taste:

Christ, as a light

illumine and guide me.

Christ, as a shield overshadow me.

Christ under me;

Christ over me;

Christ beside me

on my left and my right.

This day be within and without me,

lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.

Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;

in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.

This day be within and without me,

lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.

Christ as a light;

Christ as a shield;

Christ beside me

on my left and my right.

Amen

Unbecoming Victor[ia]

Lately I have been feeling in increasing sympathy with Victor Meldrew (the 'hero' of One Foot in the Grave), feeling incredibly intensely angry with just about everything. I have found myself ranting and shouting at the television, losing it over the slightest thing, tense and overwhelmed by anger. A lot of it to do with feeling out of control and unable to change things, like the government or the benefits' system or the way we human beings treat one another.

Of course I know that anger is not always a negative thing, that Jesus was righteously angry, most famously when he took a whip to the sellers in the temple courts. However, although a very small proportion of my anger could perhaps be construed this way - at injustice in the world and my own sin - the majority of it cannot. Moreover it is not even useful anger, of a sort that spurs one onto change something in the world, to do something about it, instead it leaves me exhausted and drained, which is not a good use of an already scarce resource.

This weekend, having shouted and ranted my way through most of an edition of Any Questions on Radio 4 I realised that I needed to do something to change this situation. In classical Christian parlance I felt convicted, in particular by Jesus' words in the sermon on the mount:

"But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell." (Matthew 5.22 NIV)

In particular by the word 'Raca' from this passage and I hated feeling so bitter, angry and out of control. It is the feeling that there are major aspects of my life, such as my health care provision or my income and general government policy, over which I have no control. I have been enraged by the government's attitude towards the vulnerable and their demonization of the sick and disabled; and worse still felt powerless, too tired to protest and generally overwhelmed, invisible and not heard. Listing all the things that have been making me angry would take a long time and it was alarming how unloving, ungracious (in the godly meaning of the word) and hateful I was becoming, the opposite of Jesus in so many ways.

But then as I was praying and mulling over how to deal with this, begging God to help me not feel so angry or be able to use this anger to some effect, it came to me. I may not have the ear of government ministers or the media, but I do have the ear of one who is far more powerful: God "for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing" (Romans 13.6 NIV) and He always listens (Proverbs 15.29; Luke 18, among many others).

Prayer yet again is the answer, as I have found many times before (why do I always seem to forget?!). It is doubly powerful because it can change a situation (e.g. 1 Kings 18) and change me: changes my heart and my mind and my attitude about people and situations as it brings me closer to God as I spend time with Him. So I've started praying, starting with David Cameron and continuing with others and situations which have made me angry, and already I feel calmer and more at peace with the world. Naturally it is not quite that simple, I still have a long way to go, but I feel like I am on the right path: knowing that I have someone I can turn to, who listens and is infinitely powerful, helps so much.

Before I feel too self-congratulatory I should thank God, for once again forgiving me and drawing me close to Him, for His patience and His love and His grace.

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philipians 4.4-7

May we all know God's peace.