Monthly Archives: February 2012

Ten Ideas for Lent

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Ten Ideas for Lent. ( from Stephen Cherry’s Blog)

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Ten Ideas for Lent

These ideas all all based on my book Barefoot Disciple: Walking the Way of Passionate Humility The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2011

The original plan was to include these ideas in the book but in the end we decided not to. Just as well, probably. Now you can get them without troubling to read it.

Have a great Lent! And if you do nothing else, try number 6.

1. Take Off Your Shoes

We have all walked barefoot and felt the earth beneath our feet. And we all played barefoot when we were children. But have you everprayed barefoot? Do it once and you won’t forget it. It will touch your imagination. Try it out of doors. As you feel the world through the soles of your feet, you will begin to realise the spiritual relevance of the material world. As a barefoot disciple living in a northern country you will, most of the time, be well shod. But if spiritually your feet are bare, you will tread carefully and walk differently. You and your prayer will be earthed, real, humble.

2. Admit a Recent Mistake

Just one will do. Notice when you have made a mistake and own up to it quickly, simply and honestly. And then let it go. Do not seek forgiveness unless the mistake has really hurt someone. If you say ‘sorry’ as a habit, stop it now. You are devaluing the currency. The idea is to acknowledge that you are a mistake-maker for much of the time. This is an exercise in realism and true modesty. Once you have mastered it, you will no longer try to cover up the mistakes you make in daily living. Rather you will find them to be opportunities to learn humility. After a while you might even develop the confidence to begin to address the mistakes for which you really do need to ask forgiveness.

3. Pocket an Insult

The phrase is Ghandi’s. He is a barefoot walker who can speak to us from another faith. It means: ‘do not take an insult personally’, ‘do not take it to heart’, ‘do not react’. But, equally, it does not mean ‘ignore it and it will go away’. Rather, if you are on the receiving end of an insult, it is rarely going to be helpful to react. Instead, pop it into your pocket and, after a while, take it out to see whether it is worth responding to carefully and humbly. Such humility can be determined and powerful, but it is never hot-headed or full of smouldering resentment.

4. Behave as a Child

Jesus says that children are at home in the kingdom of God. And so he wants adults to be childlike. What could be more fun than that! This is your the invitation to let the child within out to play. The child in you is naïve, impulsive, direct, simple, trusting, vulnerable, unsophisticated and unpretentious. Jesus tells us that this is a really most important part of who we are. If the inner child does not thrive then nor do we. Let your inner child out to play. It knows how to live.

5. Step across a Boundary

Visit somewhere that feels a bit scary, uncomfortable or even provocative to you. For many Christian people, a visit to the place of worship of people of another faith is uncomfortable and disorienting enough to wake them up to the fascination, depth and quality of their own faith. So visit a Mosque, Synagogue, Hindu Temple or Sikh Gurdwara. Risk putting yourself in a situation where you know that you will not fully understand what is going on and feel like an outsider. Pay attention to your feelings and let your bewilderment and confusion enhance your learning, your wonder and your enjoyment of the experience. Afterwards try to describe your experiences in a notebook or perhaps to a friend who agrees to step out of his or her comfort zone too.

6. Give up Grumbling

Do you remember Terry Waite’s vow when taken into captivity: ‘no self-pity’? It is a good one but it is far more difficult than we realise. So take the trouble to tune in to the grumbling that you hear around you (and which sometimes comes from your own mouth). It will be difficult to give up grumbling for good, so start by giving it up for Lent. After you have done without it you will wonder why you ever bothered with it. And if you can’t give it up, try to transform it into protest, penitence or petition. You will soon find you have a new passion for both justice and prayer.

7. Practise Hospitality

Take the trouble to notice the people you don’t usually notice. Offer a greeting when others are locked in silence. Learn how to wave in an affirming, positive way. Learn how to smile across a room or make eye-contact across a meeting to support someone who is struggling. You can’t be friends with everyone, but by being friendly you can touch, and perhaps change, many people’s lives and even have an impact on the whole social environment of a neighbourhood. Don’t think that you need to turn your home into a refuge for ex-prisoners in order to exercise true hospitality. Simply take one small but deliberate step in the direction of being more hospitable.

8. Do Something for Someone Else

Do something simple, modest but practical for someone else. It might involve giving someone an unexpected gift or offering to help lift something. Such gratuitous and caring action can touch the heart and imagination and have untold positive repercussions. But don’t be excessive. Don’t take over. Don’t create dependency. Lend a hand but try not to ‘make a suggestion’. It is modest, humble, practical generosity that is called for. Not grand projects or patronising performances.

9. Be Proud of Yourself

Surprised by this suggestion? While bad pride is to be avoided there is such an experience as good pride. It is a very down to earth feeling and we have it when we allow ourselves to look at work well done with kind and straightforward eyes. It is childlike to have good pride, because there is nothing arrogant or conceited in it. Good pride accepts praise gratefully but humbly and allows you to recognise that your efforts are worthwhile and achievements valid. Good pride is not pushy and might be expressed modestly: ‘hmmm, not bad’. It is a good feeling and not only consistent with healthy humility – but a sign of it. Meanwhile try to shake off all forms of bad pride: arrogance, conceitedness and chauvinism. But also try to do away with false modesty. No more ‘little me’, thank you.

10. Encourage Others

Encouraging others is the opposite of criticising them. Whereas criticism comes from meanness of spirit encouragement comes from generosity of spirit. As such it reflects something of God’s love. Also, whereas criticism often comes from envy, encouragement comes from a desire to see others thrive and flourish. Criticism can come from a spirit of competition or fear, whereas to encourage people involves noticing what they are contributing. Tell people you havenoticed the difference that their effort has made or let them see that you acknowledge their difficulty or suffering. We are often a bit stingy with our encouragement, for fear of causing others to swell in pride. The truth is that when encouragement is sincere and appropriately expressed, it nurtures genuine humility. Allow people the joy of feeling truly humbled and really encouraged by what you say.

( Editor’s note – I can thoroughly recommend both this blog and the book Barefoot Disciple The Way of Passionate Humility. Links to both in blue above) 

Light in the cracks

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“There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in” A famous line from Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem. I came across the song for the first time at an alternative Eucharist I attended recently, based on Cohen’s intense, insightful songs.  Robust, creative liturgy provided the framework in which the songs were used, each powerfully complimenting and enriching the other.  An ancient, candlelit church provided the backdrop for this powerful encounter with God in the broken bread and poured out wine.  Many songs were used, ‘Hallelujah’,’ Suzanne’ and others, and each is worthy of its own reflection, but I have picked out this one particularly, as  it touched a nerve in allot of us who were there.

 
 
“Anthem”
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government —
signs for all to see.
 
I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring …
 
You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
on your little broken drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

This song has hovered in the background of the last few weeks which haven’t been the easiest start to a Lent term. Demands and stretching circumstances on a whole manner of fronts, have made juggling home and study, family and academic pressures, interesting to say the least!  Such is life, and that is how it goes sometimes. It has been my experience over my life time that if I let Him, God can use the hard times to be rich ground for growth or ‘formation’ as it is known at theological college.  The centre of Cambridge is being dug up ( again) at present. It doesn’t have a sign that says ” Men at Work” but it could. It is awkward, messy and  disruptive. Sometimes it feels like that in the spiritual/emotional realm. We need a big sign saying “God at work”.

Yesterday  I was leading our tutor group prayers/meditation. I used Cohen’s words paired with another powerful poem which goes further in developing the theme of growth and the cracks it causes. I didn’t know at the time, but it was written by a priest, Dave Bookless, when he was himself at theological college, some years ago. He used it for his own tutor group worship.

Cracks

There are cracks in my world
I noticed them one day and now they are everywhere:
Sinister hairline cracks that start and finish out of sight
cracks that grow and gape and laugh at my certainties
My world has been declared unsafe
 
I have tried to paper them over,
paint them out,
move the furniture to hide them,
but they always return, 
cracks that hang like  question marks in my mind.
And now I begin to think:
why do the cracks appear?
from where do they come? 
They have made my room unsafe
BUT
 
They have thrown it open to new horizons
drawn back the curtains
raised long closed shutters.
One day I looked and crack had become a window.
Step through it said, what have you to fear?
Do you wish to stay in your crumbling room?
 
And then I remembered a childhood dream.
Watching the egg of some exotic bird
oval and perfect, spotted blue and cream
I wished to hold that egg and keep it on a shelf
BUT
 
As I watched it, cracks appeared.
Tiny fissures spread like zigzag ripples.
It broke in two and life struggled to its feet,
Wet and weak and blinking at the world.
 
Without those cracks that egg could hold
no more than rotting stagnant death
 
without its cracks my world would be
a room without a view
Cracks maybe uncomfortable, disturbing gaps
BUT
 
Could it be that I need them?
Do you believe in cracks?
Because I keep searching for God in the room
and find he is hiding in the cracks.
 
Dave Bookless    
 
This poem can be found in Dave’s book God Doesn’t Do  Waste IVP 2010 , and you can find out more about him and his work with A Rocha  here: www.blog.arocha.org  
 

Later that morning, one of my group shared with me yet another poem on this theme. The writer Imtiaz Dharker was inspired to write about her experience of the ceiling of her house falling in, leading to a cathartic giving away of her possessions, moving into a new freedom. She puts  this so much better in her own words on the website, Sheer Poetry:
http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/gcse/imtiaz-dharker/this-room

“In the poem ‘This room’ I wanted to suggest first of all that some kind of constriction is suddenly falling away. The walls of the room could mean different things to different people, and I hope when you read the poem you will find something in it that you can relate to your own life. Very often people try to trap us inside the box of a word, a label, a definition or an expectation. The box could even be self-imposed, our own limited idea of ourselves, the structures we build up around ourselves to keep ourselves ‘safe’ – nationality, religion, social barriers that keep others out.

The poem is about a moment when the structure falls away. The room is personified. It breaks out of itself, out of something suffocating. The image of ‘cracking through its own walls’ could suggest an egg and something about to be born into the light. The lines are short and broken, the sounds sharp.

Instead of falling, the everyday objects in the room take flight to unknown possibilities. ‘No-one is looking for the door’ because doors have become irrelevant. There is no need for one conventional exit when so many openings have appeared.

Perhaps I was working towards the idea that a person or a whole culture actually becomes stronger by opening up to the outside instead of closing inward.

The poem ends with a feeling of amused dislocation and a final moment of celebration in the last lines

‘In all this excitement, I’m wondering where
I’ve left my feet, and why
my hands are outside, clapping.’

(Just an extra note: I started writing this poem when a ceiling in my house in Bombay actually fell down. I should have felt terrible about it but I didn’t. Afterwards I gave away all the things I owned in the room and that gave me a great feeling of freedom).

You could also see this as a poem about writing a poem, when the writer steps away from an experience and looks at it from the outside, from an odd angle. This is the moment of celebration.

As often happens at one of the Poetry Live! days, a student added something else to the poem. She said the words ‘this room’ could apply to the room of the title and also to the ‘room’, the space, at the end of the poem.

That’s an example of how important you are as the reader and how a poem can grow in your reading of it.”

 
 
This Room by Imtiaz Dharker

This room is breaking out
of itself, cracking through
its own walls
in search of space, light,
 empty air.The bed is lifting out of
its nightmares.
From dark corners, chairs
are rising up to crash through clouds.
 This is the time and place
to be alive:
when the daily furniture of our lives
stirs, when the improbable arrives.
Pots and pans bang together   
in celebration, clang
past the crowd of garlic, onions, spices,
fly by the ceiling fan.
No one is looking for the door.
In all this excitement I’m wondering where
I’ve left my feet, and why
my hands are outside, clapping.
 
 
 

Beannacht ( blessing or benediction)

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A blessing for a Sunday night, or a Monday morning, whatever faces you this week or has been in the week just closed. A blessing for those I know and love, and those who may  have stumbled upon this looking for something else.  Shortly before his sudden unexpected  death in 2008 aged 52, John O Donohue recited his poem Beannacht, during an interview.  I had the privilege of meeting him at Greenbelt Festival in the year or two before this, having long been captured by his writings.  In his family’s own words:

“John had an amazing intellect which could never allow itself to become a prisoner of its own `ivory tower`. He had a beautiful, wild soul that he showered with love and attention. All of this, together with his great respect for language as expression and his sensitive eye led him on the journey towards poetry as being his best-loved medium of expression and conversation. I think that ‘poetry’ must have been very frustrated at all the time he spent under the spell of Theology and Philosophy!! Poetry was an impatiently awaiting vehicle eager to transport his fluency out to starved ears.“

He served as a catholic priest for most of his adult life At the end of 2000, John retired from public priestly ministry and devoted himself full-time to his writing and to a more public life of integrity in action – speaking, advocating against social injustice, and inspiring the wealthy and powerful in society to engage their own integrity in service of meaningful, positive change. He is certainly someone I can say ( and many others will agree) whose ‘life was an inspiration, and whose memory a benediction’.

Beannacht 

for Josie, my mother
 
 
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
 
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
 
When the canvas frays 
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home. 
 
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of the light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
 
And so may a slow 
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life. 
 
This poem can be found under the title Blessing for the New Year, in his book, Bless the space Between U s available in the USA, or in the book  Echoes of Memory available in Europe/UK. 

© Estate of John O’Donohue. All rights reserved.


 

You can find out more about John and his work at :  http://www.johnodonohue.com/