Abuse in the Church: the book we have all been waiting for

October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

To Heal and Not to Hurt – a fresh approach to safeguarding in Church Alan Wilson and Rosie Harper DLT 2019

As I write, in Easter Week; Lent and Holy Week are only just done. Few clergy will have turned yet to which Lent course to use in 2020. In the continuing storm of the abuse scandals in the church innumerable apologies have been made by Archbishops and bishops. Services have been held. Liturgies celebrated. Laments prayed. But the abuse scandal is not going away. We all know that there is more to be brought to the light. That the wounds are still open and that defendedness is the predominant response. It would be a powerful statement of our intention to deal with this scandal thoughtfully if the Church of England’s two Archbishops proposed that every parish use this book in Lent next year to do theology and to think practically about how we respond to abuse, and how we become a safer church. Near the end of their book Wilson and Harper pose two questions: What sort of God do we actually believe in?What kind of community does the church have to be? This is theology at its most fundamental, raw and vital.

Twentieth century theology could be characterised as Holocaust theology. How do we deal with this deep evil at the heart not just of humanity but of Christian culture? Twenty-First century theology will have to be a theology of abuse, a response to this profound evil which is at the heart of every church. Yet To Heal and Not To Hurt is a hopeful book. “We hope”, the authors write, “it will not harm, but heal the Church, helping it to rediscover its primary pastoral identity and task.” “Insofar as the Church can bring itself to walk in the light about the evils of abuse within it, it may be able to recover some sense of what it actually means to be the body of Christ, and to live that out in the real world, not the fantasy places of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. A church that manages to be half of what it claims to be would, indeed, be good news in a broken world.”“The Church of England needs to regain a humble confidence in its own calling, and to become what Leonard Sweet has hauntingly called:a Church with a big heart, dirty hands, and a beautiful mind.(Tweet of 11.08.2018 at 0816)” Calmly written, easy to read, although never an easy read, this is the book on safeguarding that I have been looking for. Theological, Scriptural, human, honest. It begins as it must with the survivors of abuse and listening to their stories. Amalgamated and combined into 15 representative stories of abuse (‘Tales from the Crypt’) involving all parts of the Anglican spectrum and different types of abuse, the stories are not at the extremes. They are, disturbingly ‘main stream’, none of them is a story that I have not heard in my life as a priest and for which I could not give similar accounts. These accounts are used throughout the book to exemplify the call for doing things differently. A summary table in one of the helpful appendices is a good reference point to recall what the accounts are about and a list of the characters involved further aids the memory. One of the accounts, that of Mark, is re-written towards the end of the book as if everything had been done well, it shows how getting things right changes lives for the better. I still hear in the church attitudes about safeguarding as a bother, something that gets in the way, makes life too complicated and even of victims as if they exaggerate the effect of abuse on their lives. Wilson and Harper clarify what needs to take place when working with survivors of abuse including taking into account:

Psychological harm and the ongoing support needed
Life chances changed by the abuse, and possibilities for retraining, coaching and career support
Financial hardship, including loss of income and lack of pension provision
Spiritual deficit. If the survivor so wishes a spiritual friend could help detoxify faith as a resource for living.

To Heal and Not to Hurt is, as would be expected of the authors, good theology. It is clearly Scriptural, an important appendix charts some of the abuses of Scriptural texts and the account of the Good Samaritan is used throughout as a leitmotif of how the Church could behave: “whenever the Church actually behaves like the Good Samaritan, rather than the priest or the Levite, it earns trust and respect. Only by doing this can it recover authenticity, confidence and credibility.” “Picking up the phone and saying, ‘How can I help?’ is what a Good Samaritan would do. Picking up the phone to the legal team, then hiding behind the guidelines sounds more like what a Levite would do. Prioritising theology and the Church’s reputation feels like what a priest would do, passing by on the other side.”

My own professional life has mainly been in education. I would not dare hold schools and education up as the answer to all our problems but the authors do make comparisons with education that show just how far the Church still has to move. The authors’ critique of the Clergy Discipline Measure is excoriating and surely ought to move the reform of this to the top of Synod’s agenda: “It could well be that when the clergy disciplinary system was devised it was not imagined there would ever be a significant number taken out against bishops. In practice, legal professionals say privately that pro rata ten times as many CDMs are taken out against bishops as against other clergy. It may be that there are bishops who have indeed experienced disciplinary consequences from having breached safeguarding policy. Nobody knows. Nothing goes to a tribunal. Everything is kept, incestuously, within the purple circle.”“As complaints against bishops escalate, absurdity abounds, way beyond anything those who framed the CDM can have envisaged. One archbishop could have to hear a complaint about how his fellow archbishop had handled a particular case. At the same time the other archbishop could be presented with a complaint from the same complainant about how the first one had handled another aspect of the same case. Both respondents would simultaneously be advised by members of the same tiny circle of ecclesiastical lawyers. It’s cosy, but inquiring minds will wonder, how can it be justice? For any disciplinary system to work properly, justice must be seen to be done.To be credible, the whole system requires independence at every level.”

Reform of the CDM, mandatory reporting together with a national safeguarding system independently run and independently accountable are the four stand out actions that this book highlights. I cannot see any argument that stands up against these calls. Reform, as the authors point out will be expensive. At a time when the Strategic Development Fund is spending millions of pounds on mission the abuse scandals are among the most profound obstacles to mission. It would be money well spent to spend it on new independent systems which allow bishops to be bishops. The authors add recognition of Spiritual abuse, spiritual accompaniment of survivors, restoration and redress, and a healthy culture of whistle-blowing to their suggested actions. More controversial, certainly for Catholic Anglicans among whom I find my home, is the reference to sacramental confession. The seal of the confessional is now held up by some as if it were an article of the Creed. It cannot be so. Although the call is gently put, it is clear that Wilson and Harper believe that mandatory reporting should extend into the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Dostoevsky’s point remains powerful that, “if the suffering of children goes to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.” “The seal cannot be absolute in all circumstances or the Sacrament becomes what the Bible calls ‘a cloak of maliciousness.’ Disclosure of a serious crime likely to put others in danger, past or future, needs to be responsibly handled.There has been much debate around the seal of the confessional and its potential to cover up abuse. There have to be circumstances under which the rights of the abusee are placed before those of the abuser, and disclosure of crime is reported.”

In eight powerful chapters Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, and Rosie Harper his chaplain, have done what no other writing on abuse in the church that I have read has done. It is all too easy to describe any book as ‘essential reading’, but this must be it, not just for clergy but for all who care about the gospel. To do theology is to try and make sense of things, to see the meaning in them, to learn from them; not to claim that God wanted them to happen but that through them we learn more about ourselves and God. The fifteen ‘ailments of the Curia’ borrowed in the book from Pope Francis would make an excellent annual examination for any priest or bishop. The chapter on “How do they get away with it?’ must be part of the toolkit of everyone working to create a safer church.

Part of the twentieth century church’s reaction to the Holocaust was to develop the concept of the crucified God, the wounded healer, and to find it hard to talk about power. All abuse includes power, because all relationships involve power, even when equally balanced. Reading To Heal and Not to Hurt will help us talk about power and to recognise that when we do so it is healthier than ignoring it or pretending that it is not there. It will help us see that systems and processes far from restricting us set us free. As a priest it is my joy to celebrate the Eucharist every day. To repeat and fulfil Jesus’ command to do this ‘in remembrance’ of him. The spiritual life is a journey to the Eucharistic heart of God, the Eucharistic heart that is God’s desire for each of us. As the author’s write: “The Christian faith is rooted in Remembering. Knowing that he was about to be killed Jesus said, ‘remember me’ and gave his friends a way to do that which is repeated constantly in churches around the world. The Eucharist, at its best, can turn re-living into remembrance, a form of love and thankfulness.

A Church with a Eucharistic heart should be a good, safe, and healing place to do all kinds of remembering.”

Crashed: a theology of Trump and Brexit

October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World Adam Tooze Allen Lane, 2018

Christianity and Social Order is probably the most important Anglican political work of the twentieth century, with it William Temple, (Archbishop of Canterbury 1942-1944) showed how Christianity expressed its best moral impulses in democratic socialism. Previously a member of the Labour party he wrote of the need to meet the demands of workers and create a more just society in which children flourished. It is well worth reading, a fine piece of theology which takes economics and politics seriously. It is, above all a piece of Christian realism. There is, I think a problem about the way Christians speak about economics. It is too superficial, calling for a kinder, gentler capitalism but without change to the neo-liberal hegemony. The problem seems to be the paradigm of the universe that we have. Is Economics or theology the queen of science (knowledge)? Tooze in his book Crashed, quotes economist Abba Lerner (p.615) as having said that economics has made itself “queen of the social sciences”.

Having read Tooze’s brilliant book carefully (twice) what stood out for me as a Christian is the way that it tells the story, provides the meta-narrative, the grand tale of the decade that we have just lived through, that has brought us to Trump and Brexit. I have not read or heard any sermon or work of theology that even comes close to doing so (this may be a lack in my own reading and I am happy to be corrected). My own world view, as a left leaning, politically progressive Europeanist – firmly in the Remain camp – has been challenged by Tooze, it is one of the most exhilarating books I have read for a long time. The greatest challenge for me is in understanding how a moral and cultural commitment to a more integrated Europe has adversely affected the lives of millions of people because of the failures of our systems. Tooze shows clearly the catastrophic consequences of the over simplification of economics found in the “householder fallacy” (p.359) that we cannot spend more than we earn. Austerity has destroyed Greece which is a lesson to the rest of Europe and the world. (See my review of Yannis Varoufakis’ excellent book on a meta narrative of economics and politics on Ian Paul’s blog here).

A few key points in the narrative stand out: – the end of the Bretton Woods agreement, the “gold standard” which linked currency to something real could be seen as the beginning of the bubble that broke in 2008 – has the West’s treatment of Russia since the 1997 economic collapse, like Versailles, created Putin? – China is not an emerging power, economically it is already the key power – the failure of the Republican party to deal with the 2008 crisis has led directly to Trump – the idea of the ‘fake’ matches precisely the unreality of all financial value, ‘bubble’ rightly describes it – perhaps most important of all is that the financial crisis of 2008 has not been solved, we have papered over the cracks but the systemic faults remain.

I am sorry not to write a more coherent, continuous narrative of these factors, you need to read Tooze for that, and I highly recommend that you do. Perhaps read Varoufakis first – it is a much easier read and extends the meta-narrative to ancient history. I will make some comments though about reading this from a Christian perspective, they are nothing more than a ‘Work in Progress’, I don’t have the time, or the skills to do much more, writing them down will help me work on them and perhaps readers will be able to point me in further helpful directions. Two further recommendations for reading, Justin Welby’s Reimagining Britain is well worth looking at. It is a gentle proposal for a better nation. I don’t think it goes nearly far enough in addressing the structural problems. It does not allow for an alternative paradigm. The other reading I would recommend is Christianity and the New Social Order by John Atherton et al. As its title suggests it is an attempt to update Temple’s work. Although written in 2009 the authors can already see the problems that had emerged in 2008. In 1980, when I was fifteen, I started collecting newspaper cuttings. I have the pile of scrap books, covered in brown paper, still. The cuttings are all from the Guardian and reflect my political interests of the time. The miners strike, nuclear disarmament, later on stop the clause, the early days of AIDS. I like to flick through them every now and again as a reminder and a challenge to myself to be faithful to my youthful intuitions and experiences: Cycling over to Greenham Common with food to the (deeply unfriendly to me) women at the gates, raising money for the miners, organising coaches to protests at Clause 28, the NUS. My reading at the time reflected these political interests: Boff, Guttierez, Cardenal. The Liberation Theologians took Marx’s critique of capitalism seriously and sought ways to reflect theologically on them. Marx, of course, was interested in structures and systems and the way in which they oppressed. Marxism was over simplistic in its reading of society, wherever any version of it has been applied practically it has been with devastating effect. Marx never conceived of the kind of globalisation and financial structures (or lack of them) that we now have. However, if we allow Economics to be the queen of science we sell ourselves into slavery. It is theology that will give us a narrative that is richer, deeper and ethical. In its review of crashed The Guardian’s Oliver Bullough wrote:

“With luck, a new generation of politicians will emerge that is able to grasp the urgent need for both a fair settlement at home and a new structure internationally. They will have to reject the erroneous economics of the previous generation, and create theories as bold as those that underpinned Bretton Woods. This book provides the raw material for those theories; it is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the past, in order to build a better future.”

Many of the posts on this blog reflect on the spiritual and liturgical life of Christians. Our self reflection should always lead us to reflection on the wider world. That is the Anglo-Catholic tradition at its best. What I learn about human nature by reflecting on my self teaches me what human beings are capable or incapable of. A renewal of the Anglo Catholic tradition will be political and economic because, not despite of or in addition to, it is prayerful, eucharistic and liturgical. As a Head I used to say that our daily worship was a rehearsal, a practice for how every lesson should be. Bigger than that, for all Christians, our liturgy is a rehearsal of how God wants the world to be. We need a new generation, not just of politicians but of theologians, to tell the story, to create the theology, of how the fakery of money needs a concrete, real, value if it is not to suck us all into its own inauthenticity. May the living, true God lead us from the “unreal to the real”.

Finding A Moral Way in Economics

October 19, 2019October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

***

The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a grown up economy Katherine Trebeck and Paul Williams Policy Press 2019

It is not surprising that economists now claim that their discipline is ‘queen of the sciences’. Yet despite the hegemony of economics the reality of the choices involved in economics are now rarely discussed. Politicians argue about the minutiae of taxes and benefits, or the geopolitical landscape of jurisdiction and boundaries. Brexit, immigration, border controls. While ignoring the fundamental building blocks of our societies. All the books on economics that I have reviewed on this blog address the bigger picture.The Economics of Arrivalis no exception. Trebeck and Williams have a powerful vision for an economic alternative. Their concept of Arrival is one in which sustainability, happiness and being at home, play a significant part. But this is not wishful thinking. Nor is it a call for massive government led redistribution of wealth, which would, they rightly point out, deal with the symptoms of inequality, not the cause. For them:

“The idea of Arrival does not imply that all problems are solved. It does not suggest that everything is resolved and everyone has what they need. Rather it is the idea that a society collectively has the means for this.”

They write of an economy that has ‘grown-up’. That recognises that growth (particularly as measured by GDP, a metric that was invented only in the middle of the twentieth century, is pursuing the wrong goal. They also paint a picture of how pursuit of GDP growth may in fact be causing the very hollowing out of economies that reduces middle income employment and increases wealth inequality. Unlike other progressive economists they recognise that a benefits economy may contribute to GDP growth while worsening the life situation of those it aims to help. Fundamental to the authors’ critique of our current economic reality is the concept of growth. They demonstrate that permanent growth is unsustainable not simply from an ecological point of view but also because it diminishes human happiness and well-being and, perhaps most importantly of all because of the separation of capital and production. They show that it is a cancerous growth that must be stopped. The authors describe how share-holder power and legislation designed to give shareholders primacy over employees or production has led to many of our problems. Executives whose performance management is based not on productivity, or the core-service provided but on the price of the companies shares, further exacerbate this problem. Frighteningly, they demonstrate how real wealth inequality is worse in the UK than elsewhere in GDP rich countries (including the US). Most importantly they show how this has not happened by accident but is the result of political choices. This is especially the case when returns from wealth are taxed more favourably than earned income.

Chapter three is very good on demonstrating how inequality creates status anxiety which can lead precisely to the sort of political instability that is happening across the western nations. Marketisation of the good things of life, such as cooking and child-care, are just two symptoms of a growth driven economy, “Not everything that can be bought and sold should be bought and sold.” (p47). Their description of the commercialisation or privatisation of child care is particularly frightening. When I began teaching 30 or so years ago I taught a Reception class and could guarantee to see a close relative (parent or grandparent) of a child every day, usually twice a day. That is no longer the case. Perhaps the saddest form of marketisation they highlight is the growth of ‘soft play areas’ for children,

“parents don’t let their children play in the woods any more, so now they need to build the indoor, commercialised playgrounds.”

The authors are equally unsparing on the damage done by constantly rising house prices. I have long been critical of the double-income mortgage which far from bringing greater liberation to families has further trapped them in cycles of purchase and consumption. Despite their admission that uncoupling growth and carbon-emissions is almost impossible the writers are fundamentally optimistic. In Chapter Two they describe the many benefits that growth has brought and show how poverty, disease and wealth inequality have decreased worldwide in the last century. Their proposals include a radical cultural shift to show people that there can be economic growth with a destination. There can be a point at which we have ‘Arrived’. Practical suggestions are made for making the massive change called for happen. They recognise the strength of the forces that will be opposed to systemic change on the scale they suggest. They are clear that “Making ourselves at home is not a government-led vision.” (p 206) and they propose a series of practical steps for international institutions, governments, businesses, cities and local communities, and individuals.

Our politics is stuck. The inability to move ahead on Brexit is simply symptomatic of the inability to suggest new ways forward. Pure capitalism will destroy us all, and the planet we live on, but few people are suggesting real alternatives as they are here. This book tries to show how alternatives might be developed and implemented. It is not big government socialism, but it would require governmental action. Strangely, although I am generally an optimist, I found myself doubting whether the change in thinking suggested by Trebeck and Williams is possible. Perhaps that is why I am a Christian and believe that theology is queen of the sciences? I recognise the fullness of our nature. But I also think it is worth trying. There are no political parties that describe our economic situation in the way that it needs to be, none painting a significantly large picture of the way things are and the way they could be. These voices need to be heard and this book is well worth reading to hear them.

Queen of the Sciences: Economics or Theology

October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

Originally published on Ian Paul’s blog Psephizo in November 2017

A review of Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, Yanis Varoufakis, Bodley Head 2017 (2013):

There is competition for the title ‘Queen of The Sciences’. Traditionally applied to theology as the summit of knowledge and the science which explained the meaning of things and held together the other areas of knowledge, the title was also claimed, in the nineteenth century, for mathematics. Perhaps, in our own time the title could be claimed for economics? Economic models are applied to our schools, our hospitals, our public services. Economics, we might be led to believe, can explain the narrative of human history. When I taught GCSE Economics I struggled with recommended reading for my pupils. There were text books to choose from, needed to ensure curriculum coverage, but they were, it felt to me, full of isolated pieces of knowledge that it was difficult to locate into context or a larger framework or narrative.

For the first half of Yanis Varoufakis’s book Talking to My Daughter About the Economy I thought that it was the book I had been searching for. A sweeping narrative of economic history, explaining markets, capital and labour in a historical context and with simple non technical language. It is, indeed, the book I needed for my pupils, but it is so much more than the one I had imagined. The former Greek Finance Minister and erstwhile politician shows how, far from being a science in our current understanding of the word, economics is a philosophy, a language for talking about the world but not identical with it. As he writes near the end of the book:

We face a choice: we can keep pretending we are scientists, like astrologists do, or admit that we are more like philosophers, who will never know the meaning of life for sure, no matter how wisely and rationally they argue.

Varoufakis wrote the book for his teenage daughter in just nine days in 2013 before his brief tenure in government, but all the key themes of that period are present. He begins with a sweeping history of the creation of currency (which he places earlier than is usually accepted), debt, and what he calls the ‘market society’ rather than capitalism. His starting point, refreshingly, is the origin of the inequalities of the world. I had not come across the idea that Eurasia was the seat of the industrial revolution mainly because of geography and the east-west axis of the continent, ensuring easy trade and transfer of goods in similar weather conditions.

Varoufakis must be a great teacher. He uses easily understandable examples and colourful cultural references. The book includes Star Trek and The Matrix as major examples of markets grabbing the future. He references Greek myths and Second World War prisoner of war camps. Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein gets a star role. Marvellously he ends by quoting our own Anglican, T.S.Eliot. There is an element of romp to the book that might be explained by the nine days of writing or just Varoufakis’ motorbike-riding character. Either way it is deeply attractive. As he himself says, “those who write well about the economy borrow their best ideas from artists, novelists, scientists.” From a Christian perspective the book is particularly interesting. Varoufakis is no fan of the church, and the clergy in particular, who he interprets as simply giving the necessary status to the forces of the market “Debt, money, faith and state all go hand in hand.”

It would be hard to suggest that Christian, and other religious leaders, have not at times, and sometimes for long periods of time behaved in this way “cultivating an ideology which caused the majority to believe deep in their hearts that only their rulers had the right to rule”. But there is much in the book that is much more interesting from a religious, theological point of view than this. Varoufakis is concerned with the commodification of life and of human persons, with the re-creation of experiential value. He is clear that commodities will be ultimately unsatisfactory and that some greater measure of happiness is needed. At times he reads like a Rousseau-esque romantic in his view of human nature. Stating his fundamental belief “that humans have an inexhaustible ability to resist the erosion of their spirit and the cheapening of their labour.” He is certainly full of hope, although it is hard not to speculate, following his departure from government and the refusal of the EU to write off Greek debt; if he still believes that “Every crisis is pregnant with a recovery.”

For me the sterility of our politics which is the hegemony of the market and the lack of any alternatives is at the heart of what I want from economics. Varoufakis fails to deliver on that, which would make him close to messianic. But he does suggest alternatives to the mere binary arguments between big-government and small-government. He is clear about the necessity of public debt, and perhaps there is mileage in acknowledging that, and having a sensible discussion about what a manageable level of debt is and owning the fact that taxes, whether from the rich or the rest of the population are not going to be able to pay for everything we want government to provide.

When you hear politicians, economists, and commentators talk about public debt as if it is a curse, you remind yourself that it is a lot more than that. It is the ghost in the machinery of markets societies that makes them function …

Varoufakis’ hope for the future includes his beliefs in the development of robotic automatisation. This, for me, is the least convincing part of the book. What will and will not be possible for machines is still not known. Too many of his examples of what might be possible derive from science-fiction not reality. The suggestion that there be public ownership of some proportion of machine-robots as they develop feels just plucked from thin air.

For Varoufakis “the economy is too important to leave to the economists.” To defer to ‘experts’ is to capitulate political freedom. This is an important read and Varoufakis has much to contribute to the debate. It is a much better book than his self-justifying and self-aggrandising Adults in the Room. He is clear that economics and politics can never be separated. We need to hear alternative voices in this debate and Varoufakis is a rare voice. Over and over again, I was struck by the existential nature of the questions he raises: What is it to be human? What is satisfaction? How do we achieve happiness? For me, of course, these are all theological questions. It is not surprising that he ends with Eliot: the end of all our exploring will certainly be to arrive where we started.

About Me

October 19, 2019January 21, 2023Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

Fr Richard Peers

Dean of Llandaff Cathedral, Church in Wales

Sub Dean, Christ Church, Oxford 2020 – 2022

Director of Education in the Diocese of Liverpool 2016 – 2020

Chief Executive Officer, Liverpool Diocesan Schools Trust

Formerly Head Master of Trinity All Through School Lewisham (2008 – 2016)

Previously served as Deputy Head in Primary and Secondary schools

B.Ed. in World Religions from King Alfred’s College, Winchester 1984 – 1988

B.A . in Theology, University of Southampton

M.Ed., Institute of Education

Trained for ordination at Chichester Theological College 1990-1993

Ordained deacon for St Hilda of Whitby, Grangetown, Middlesbrough in 1993 by Archbishop John Hapgood in York Minster

Ordained priest in 1994 in Grangetown by the Bishop of Whitby, The Rt. Rev’d. Gordon Bates

Also served as Assistant Priest at:

St Mary, Portsea (Portsmouth)

Portsmouth Cathedral

St Andrew, Earlsfield (Southwark)

All Saints, Blackheath (Southwark)

St Mary, Lewisham (Southwark)

First Superior of the Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests since 2016 – 2021

Singing Compline and the Lord’s Prayer yn Gymraeg

October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

UPDATE 24 08 19Many thanks for comments on the pointing etc. Here are updated forms of Compline, a setting of the Lord’s Prayer to Rimsky-Korsakov (based on that in Emynau Catholig) and the Conclusion to the Office. All in PDF format.Cwmplin

Ein Tad … RK

Conclusion yn G

*** Spending my teenage years just outside of Reading my first experience of the Daily Office was sung Evensong at St Nicholas, Sulham and the sung Office of the monks at Douai Abbey. I was surprised to discover that the Office could be said. These days next to my prayer desk as well as the usual books I keep the music and texts for singing the Office in French and German (Chanter l’Office and Antiphonale zum Stundengebet). I have enough of both languages (and knowledge of the liturgy) to be able to use them now and again and there is something about praying in another language that keeps the attention at 100%. Last week I was in the Bangor diocese and glad to share in worship partly in Welsh. I am a failed Welsh-learner having made three or four attempts over the last twenty years or so, mainly in order to be able to read Welsh poetry, but latterly as more priests in Wales have joined the Sodality. (A personal hero, A.M. Allchin, is reputed to have learnt Welsh in a year …). I particularly enjoyed singing Tell Out My Soul in Welsh (O f’enaid, cân, mawrha yr Arglwydd Dduw) and last year I was at a beautiful dawn Vigil on Easter day and enjoyed singing Taizé chants in Welsh. Some of those chants are in the Welsh Methodist Hymnal Caneuon Ffydd which I have and is excellent. I’ve been searching for resources to sing the Office in Welsh so I can get it by heart and it seems that there are very few (I am happy to be corrected!). My friend and Associate of the Sodality, Fr Dylan Parry Jones, and I have exchanged messages about this and he tells me that Welsh is difficult to use with chant because of the nature of the stress patterns – mainly on the penultimate syllable of words. English too has complicated patterns for stress and many musical or chant purists object to the setting of English to Latin plainchant melodies. I agree that when this is done just by squeezing English words to fit the traditional melodies this can create some very peculiar effects. But in the last half century many musicians have worked to create authentically modal chants for use with English. So, Fr Dylan’s message came as something of a challenge. I thought I would start with Compline. The opening and concluding verses are set to a simple but memorable psalm tone:

The hymn to the traditional ferial tone for Te lucis:

I am pleased with the antiphon to the psalm (used for all three traditional Compline psalms). The tone and antiphon are in the 8th mode (traditional at Compline). The tone is very simple (from Stanbrook Abbey – apologies, I first claimed to have written it myself!) with just a change of note at the final stressed syllable (so it doesn’t matter whether that is the final or penultimate syllable). The Eastertime triple alleluia is given here as well:

The Responsory is set to the Latin melody and I think works.

The antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis has been much more difficult. The Welsh version in the Church in Wales’ liturgy has 32 words; the English has 25 words and fewer syllables, and the Latin only 15. I tried hard to fit the Welsh text to a repeated pattern of the Latin melody but it really felt very strained. So I have used an English setting by Dom Philip Gaisford at Worth Abbey, repeating sections of the melody and providing another very simple tone:

The text of the whole Office is available here: Cwmplin (PDF)Cwmplin MSW (The music will only appear if the Meinrad fonts are installed). I would be very grateful to have any improvements and corrections suggested or hear about other resources. I hope this will be helpful to my sisters and brothers in the Sodality in Wales (and beyond) and to others.

Liturgy for the Creation Season

October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers 1 Comment

Liturgy of Creation Anyone who has been in a pub with me when a pub quiz begins knows that I don’t hang around for long. What they may not know are the bad experiences that have given me a lifelong aversion to quizzes. The first when I was 12 was a competitive inter school quiz. As the year rep on our team I did well on politics, history, religion and even music. But then came sport. ‘What sport takes place at Brands Hatch’. In a moment of ignorant panic I called out ‘rock climbing’. The whole school fell about laughing and even now people who remember me from then are known to whisper those two words teasingly. The second was just after I’d been ordained priest. I was in a pub with my brother-in-law. We joined a team and did well at History, General Knowledge and so on. Then came the Religion round. In my clerical collar I could hardly avoid appearing to be the expert. ‘What did God make on the fifth day of creation?’ My stab in the dark was not successful. My brother-in-law never lets me forget. I have however done much, since then, to improve my knowledge of the first account of creation. Of the making of liturgical seasons it can sometimes feel there is no end. Fortunately the ‘kingdom season’ has not really caught on and most of us have been able to enjoy the eschatological themes of the end of the liturgical year without changing liturgical colours and managing quite well in green vestments from the Baptism to the Presentation. Green vestments seem especially appropriate in what some describe as the ‘Creation season’ from 1st September to the 4th October. Actually I think this is one of the most sensible ideas for a new ‘season’ and draws out themes which are often underplayed in the liturgy. In light of the threat to the environment and planet it is more important than ever that we not only celebrate creation but repent of our abuse of it. There are many resources available for this season which has been encouraged by the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch. Common Worship: Times and Seasons is excellent and a simple Google search reveals many more resources. These are all very useful for adding a ‘creation’ flavour to these Sunday’s in Ordinary Time or for compiling a special liturgy. For those who use the Roman Missal appropriate Masses for the ferial days of this season include the two formulas for the Sanctification of Human Labour (pp.1353-1355) At Seed Time (p. 1355 and 1356) After the Harvest (p.1357), For Those Suffering Hunger (p.1365-1366) For Rain, (p.1367). Some of the elements in the traditional liturgy provide rich resources for use at this time and could give the Daily Office a creation theme throughout the period. It is these I will highlight here. The most obvious is the canticle Benedicite which for Anglicans was one of the invariable canticles of Matins (with the Te Deum as an alternative) throughout the year. It is repeated on all Sunday’s and Solemnities in the Roman Office and is given as an Opening Psalm for Sundays in Ordinary Time in Common Worship. Benedicite is a text worth memorising, so might well be usable daily from 1st September to October 4th. There are many simple musical settings. Here is a simple tone (I think from Douai Abbey) set to the Common Worship text:

This antiphon and tone are from Conception Abbey and is a reminder of the origins of this Canticle:

There are many Anglican Chant settings and recordings of Benedicite. Not least the simple ones in The Manual of Plainsong, here to the lovely Peregrine tone:

But the memory of my ignorance at a pub quiz directs me to the seven days of creation. It is surprising in some ways that these haven’t figured more highly in Christian or Jewish liturgy. The most recent Liberal Jewish prayer book (siddur) in the UK Siddur Lev Chadash (1995) does include the appropriate section of Genesis 1 in the daily morning service:

The notes state “The idea of reading on each day of the week the relevant section of the Creation Story is a revival of an ancient practice (of the Ma’amadot, lay prayer-groups, of Temple times; cf. M.Ta’anit 4:2f.” (page 665). I once tried to use the seven days as a set of invitatory antiphons:

The texts are a bit long really, and lose the sense of a call to worship. The most obvious place where the western liturgical tradition commemorates the seven days of creation is in the hymns at vespers from Epiphany to Lent. They are in the English Hymnal as hymn numbers 58 to 62. Modern versions are in the Stanbrook Abbey Hymnal and by Aelred-Seton Shanley Obl.OSB Cam. The latter are to be found in the music for the Office book posted earlier on this blog and as a series of pictures below which also includes the English Hymnal texts and a modern use of the days of creation in the office of the Jerusalem Community in Paris. These are the work of the Dominican Andre Gouzes for his complete setting of a French language office as the Liturgie Chorale du People de Dieu. These chants work well as an alternative to the Opening Psalm / Invitatory at Morning Prayer / Lauds or could be used as a hymn at Prayer During the Day during the Creation Season. At the very least the Genesis text could replace the short reading at Prayer During the Day or Lauds/Vespers, or Psalm 104 with its magnificent creation themes could be used as an additional psalm at the beginning of Evening Prayer throughout the season. (Apologies for the spell check marks here, up date in due course…)

A daily psalm for the Creation Season

October 19, 2019October 19, 2019Father Richard Peers 1 Comment

Psalm 104 is used daily in the Orthodox liturgy and could be added to the beginning of the psalmody at Evening Prayer. Here are a few refrains/antiphons and a pointed text from Common Worship which could be used in the long or short forms. Another good text for learning by heart:

Mindfulness for Mission: there is no God-shaped hole

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

I can’t remember when I first became interested in meditation, or indeed started meditating. It may have been reading Thomas Merton as a fourteen year old, or perhaps it was talking to Fr Peter Bowe at nearby Douai Abbey? Either way I am glad that right at the beginning of my preparation for ministry as a priest that important thread was present. I would never have guessed then how significant the teaching of what is now almost universally called “Mindfulness” would be in my life.

It is easy to sneer or at least feel an inner rolling of the eyes in church or other circles when Mindfulness is mentioned. “Religion-lite” or “just another fad” are phrases I’ve heard. But I am always impressed with the seriousness which participants bring to the training. Formal meditation of this sort is a fundamental part of my life. I have taught it in all the schools I’ve worked in with four to eighteen year olds and with colleagues. It was an essential part of school improvement as a Head teacher and I have taught Mindfulness in parishes, on pilgrimages and on retreats. I can’t possibly meet the demand from across the country for this teaching. I am interested in this and in how this relates to mission. Does mindfulness lead to people meeting Jesus? The simple answer is yes, I have seen it happen. It does this in a number of ways.

In the last few years I have developed a two stage process in mindfulness training. In the first stage of four sessions I teach practices which could be used by anyone, regardless of faith or belief, I use no specifically Christian language or imagery and I make clear that the results will be a reduction in stress, relaxation and greater clarity, although meditating to get these results is unhelpful. I then offer additional sessions on specifically Christian forms of meditation, lectio, the Jesus Prayer and recently I’ve added the technique of the Cloud of Unknowing. Interestingly, the expectation is always made clear when these sessions stretch over a number of weeks that some people will not want to attend the explicitly Christian sessions. Usually a few people will tell me at the first session that they are not going to. But what actually happens is that on every occasion, so far, everybody does attend all the sessions. Happily, as a result of doing so, some individuals over the years have begun attending church and have come to faith.

I have come to believe – and it really is only from my conversations with participants – that there is something about the experience of meditation that prepares people for faith. Over the next year I hope to use feedback forms to get a clearer picture of this, but my working hypothesis is that mindfulness leads to these four experiences all of which are good foundations for faith:

1 – compassion

2 – connectedness

3 – watchfulness

4 – abandonment

COMPASSION When people sit still, observe their breathing, notice their thoughts coming and going they always experience something close to a feeling of love. They feel more loving and more loved. Although, very occasionally distressing thoughts and memories do arise this is really quite rare and even then it is within a larger experience of love.

CONNECTEDNESS Although mindfulness may appear to be a very solitary, individualistic exercise, focussed on the self, in fact the internal experience is of being less separated and more connected, not just to people but to the physical world. Sitting still and observing the breath is a strongly physical experience. It is not “all in the mind”.

WATCHFULNESS I have been undecided on what to call this experience and wondered about ‘awakeness’. In the end I’ve decided on watchfulness because it has Christian history in the Philokalic tradition where the writings of the Philokalia are the writings of the neptic ones, the awake, the watchful. Participants typically describe this as being more alert, or even more alive. Occasionally, in the early stages and often with teenagers, there is a feeling of sleepiness, sleep deprivation is a significant problem, but this usually passes.

ABANDONMENT Again, I haven’t been very certain what to call this. Because mindfulness is about noticing things, and particularly noticing thoughts as they arise and as they pass, it increases the ability to let go, to not need to be in control. This is very helpful preparation for abandonment to God.

Over the last year I have been reading and re-reading Augustine’s Confessions, although he is frequently held up as an example of “conversion experience”, notably his experience in the garden when he hears a voice tell him to “tolle, lege“, take up and read the Bible, in fact his experience is really of a long process of conversion through reflection on his own life. Indeed, that is exactly what the Confessions is, an extended meditation on his own life that Augustine hopes will show not himself but his method of coming to faith. It is not surprising therefore that for Augustine, using the human mind as an analogy for the god-head, our threefold experience of memory, understanding and will is one way of perceiving the existence of the Trinity. We are hard-wired for faith, it is in the structure of our minds not just in our thoughts. One homiletic reflection on mission is that people have a need for God that cannot be met in any way other than by knowing God, this is sometimes referred to as a “God-shaped hole” . This blog post has a good discussion on the origins of this phrase. I am not convinced that the phrase is particularly helpful either missionally or in our understanding of how and why people come to faith, I think (contra some of the comments on that blog) that it does not describe Augustine’s experience. It may be that I am simply trying to say kataphatically what “God-shaped hole” is saying apophatically, but I think the effect of saying it in that different way is quite significant. Frankly, if there is a God-shaped hole most people in our societies don’t feel it, or the need to fill it. Rather, it seems to me that people find not a lack of something in mindfulness but a waking up of a very real, positive part of themselves that has been underused, this is a good biblical image too since Jesus reminds us to “stay awake”.

When people experience compassion, connectedness, watchfulness and abandonment, they are experiencing God. In fact I am not convinced of the helpfulness of the distinction made in some spiritual writing between apophatic and kataphatic. John of the Cross’s powerful poem on the Dark Night is notably passionate, and positive in what it says about God. There are two other areas of interest for me which I hope to investigate further. One is the practice of the Cloud’s method of prayer. The slow repetition of a single word. I only began this practice myself a relatively short time ago and have only taught it to groups twice. I need to work further on the teaching of it but I am encouraged that some people reported finding it helpful. The other area is in the teaching of the Jesus Prayer. The form I use myself is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.” Sometimes I omit the latter two words. If I don’t one or of the participants will say that they find thinking of themselves as a sinner difficult. This too must relate in some way to our difficulties in communicating Christian faith, I would like to think more about that.

Now, I am not claiming that Mindfulness will lead seamlessly to conversion to Trinitarian faith. Clearly it doesn’t. Buddhists have been practising Mindfulness for centuries without embracing Christianity! Mindfulness is not the whole of conversion and solid teaching of Scripture and doctrine is also needed (part 2 of this series on Mission) but it can be a very helpful preparation. Any bookshop will have rows and rows of books on Mindfulness but very little on Christianity. If we avoid Mindfulness we are losing an important tool for mission. When I teach mindfulness practices from the Christian tradition, lectio, Jesus Prayer, the Cloud’s method, a reaction I regularly hear is that participants had no idea that Christianity has such practices. A final difficulty for us is that people who have had profound experiences in Mindfulness practice are often disappointed by the lack of silence and stillness and the sheer busy-ness they find when they go to church.

Mission: it’s all about memory

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

There is a substantial literature on mission. People study degrees in it and publish learned theses about it. That is not my area of expertise. Although, I have been involved in mission all my life. In parishes and schools, in every context I find myself I have sought to bring people to know Jesus. I do not think we should be running schools unless they are genuinely at the heart of our mission to the nation.

So, this post is an exercise in applying what is the nearest thing to an expertise I’ve got, education, to the subject of mission. In particular a recent publication, Understanding How We Learn, provides an excellent overview on current thinking on learning. I believe there is much that the church, leaders, clergy, Sunday school teachers and others can gain from reading this and applying it in our churches. Finally I will say a little about how I am applying this thinking in my own preaching and teaching in church contexts.

Who is Jesus?

Seems like a good place to start. In the Gospels there are 90 occasions when Jesus is addressed directly with a title. On 60 of those occasions he is addressed as ‘Teacher’. Jesus himself used the term when he said, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am” (John 13:13). When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, he said, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God” (John 3:2). We know, from Matthew’s gospel that “he taught as one having authority, not as the teachers of the law” (Matthew 7:29). At the end of his gospel Matthew tells us that Jesus commands his disciples “Go into all the world and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19). Jesus’ followers are ‘disciples’, learners. Teaching is a fundamental part of Christian leadership. The traditional explanation of the functions of Jesus in ministry are as ‘prophet, priest and king’, this was probably firstly explicated by Eusebius and then taken up in Reformed churches by Calvin, and, later Wesley. It has found its way into the current Catechism of the Catholic Church at no. 436 “Jesus fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel in his threefold office of priest, prophet and king.”.

It is a shame that the tradition has not enshrined the role of Jesus as teacher as firmly as the roles of prophet, priest and king, but the biblical evidence is enough. Teaching is what Christian leaders do. Discipling people is teaching them, enabling them to learn what it is to be a Christian. When Jesus wanted to do the most profound thing he could to sustain his disciples (learners) through the darkest times, and at all times and in all places, what did he ask them to do? “Do this TO REMEMBER me.” It shouldn’t, therefore come as any surprise to Christians that the best research education shows us that memory is not only the fundamental unit of learning but also of who we are. “Think about how you define yourself,” write Weinstein and Sumeracki in their book Understanding How We Learn, “your very identity is most likely full of things you remember yourself doing.” p. 64 “Everything you do requires memory in some form or another.” p 64 “For brain scientists, there are no other forms of knowledge: everything that is learned is memory.” p.75

We are what we remember. This is not radical. My 86 year old mother has dementia. I don’t know exactly when but at some level we lost her a few years ago. We love her dearly, we do everything we can for her but she is not herself any more because she has lost her memory. Memory is the fundamental existential unit. It is who we are. When we disciple people, we teach them to remember Jesus, not just in some abstract sense but by actually remembering, memorising the words he spoke, the psalms he prayed, the things people said about him. Almost every traditional practice of the spiritual life in the Christian tradition is about getting over our basic forgetfulness. Is about helping us to remember, praying regularly through the day, praying in every moment, helping us not to forget.

Understanding How We Learn, is written by two cognitive scientists. They provide really helpful models for teaching based on this pattern: 1Spacing2 Elaboration3 Concrete Examples4 Visuals5 Retrieval You will, I’m afraid have to read the book – and I recommend it, without reservation, to clergy and other church leaders, to see what exactly is meant by this. I would however draw attention to the fact that the book addresses firstly the tendency we all have to assume that we know what learning is and how to achieve it. After all we have all been in education for many years, in fact though, intuition is the enemy of learning. All of us who teach and preach in church need to re-examine what we do, and work out whether we are delivering, achieving what we think we are. All the evidence suggests that we are not. We need to do something differently.

In my own life I now cringe when I think about some of my earlier classroom practice. I also cringe when I think about my teaching as a priest on Lent courses, bible studies, and in my preaching. What I have been trying to do as the research evidence on effective teaching becomes clearer is to teach knowledge based sermons. Content is all. People should leave knowing more than they did before they arrived. My experience is that evangelicals are much better at this than Catholic Anglicans, but that there is also a danger for evangelicals in becoming all about experience and not about knowledge. At New Wine this summer Ian Paul was, by a long way, the best teacher present, but probably the lowest attended sessions I went to. We live in an experience driven culture. I want to distinguish between preaching and teaching sessions. I have, as anybody who knows me is aware, a deep love of the rhythm and structure of the liturgy. A sermon or homily has a character that is distinctive from a teaching session. But … as those of us who pray the Breviary know the extracts we hear and read daily from the great fathers and teachers of the church in their homilies do not bear much relation to the 3 minute ‘Thought for the Day’ that characterise many of our homilies.

I have come to believe that I need to think of my preaching much more in the way that I thing about learning in schools, Understanding How We Learn, can help inform our preaching and teaching. I suppose, when I was ordained a quarter of a century ago I imagined preaching like a tiny diamond, the smaller, the more perfect, the better. Three minutes, perfectly crafted. I just do not believe any longer that that is sufficient for Christian growth. For most people in church on a Sunday that will be their only Christian teaching of the week. To deliver an effective teaching session on a Sunday morning I now believe that 15 – 20 minutes are needed. This takes me 4-6 hours to prepare. The longer I spend on the preparation the better it is. In that time, didactic as it, intentionally, is, I try and make sure that it is not just me speaking. I often ask questions, I use paired activities, I use white cards that people write on, I ask the whole congregation to repeat prayers and texts after me. If it is a series, which I prefer, I revise material from previous sessions, I describe the map of learning. If I am presiding as well as preaching I will use every opportunity to re-cap the learning, pointing out at the beginning of Mass what I am going to preach on, preaching on it, referring to it again in the intercessions, at the peace or offertory, at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, at the silent prayer after communion and even just before the blessing, especially if I have set homework. The content too of my preaching has changed. Doctrine and Scripture provide us more than enough material. Most people in our churches have received minimal if any substantial teaching. The field is open to us. My only question to myself: What have they learnt? My ‘new’ (to me) style of preaching often elicits the comment “Oh, we can tell you are a teacher”. I used to worry about that. Now, I just think that I am grateful to be a follower of Jesus, The Teacher, and if I am described as a teacher that is flattery indeed.

Please read Understanding How We Learn. It is very helpful indeed.

Mission and Young People: the easier we make it the less attractive it is

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

In Understanding How We Learn, the authors spend some time showing how our intuitions about learning are often, perhaps usually, wrong. They explain that one of the reasons for this is that almost everyone has many years experience of education before they become teachers and that misunderstandings become habits that it is hard to break. They list a number of common misunderstandings, all of which have been shown to be untrue, and the percentage of teachers and educators who continue to believe them:

There are many cross-overs between the two worlds in which I work, church and education. Partly because so much of what church leaders do is teaching, partly because through our church schools many clergy and others in the church are involved in the life of schools and also because so many clergy are former teachers. I often hear ‘learning styles’ mentioned in church contexts and sometimes manage to bite my tongue and don’t point out the substantial research base proving this misunderstanding to be just that.

The sweep of educational change in the west to ‘child-centred’, progressive, discovery based methods and now the emergence of knowledge-based learning and more didactic styles of teaching are referred to in links and references in the previous posts on mission in this series of posts. I don’t think, that I am yet seeing the move away to knowledge-based, didactic methods much influencing the church so far.

In all of the contexts where I have worked as a priest and teacher I have been struck by the apparent mismatch of Anglican church culture and the needs of children for something that they could take more seriously. The attraction of some young people to Islam and the popularity of the writer Jordan Peterson among white working class men are phenomena that are making me wonder about the need for greater seriousness in our teaching, and living, of the faith. Whenever I take young people to Taizé I can be certain that the biggest impact on them is the seriousness of the brothers, committing themselves for life to this way of living. Many people are deeply critical of the emerging knowledge based, didactive methods of education and often claim that children will be unhappy or less creative as a result. Our intuition is that making things easier, more entertaining is what will make children more successful. In fact, the evidence, and my experience is quite the opposite. In schools like Michaela Community School, or St Martin’s Academy I see children challenged to levels of work that would have been inconceivable 15 years ago. And they love it. There is a seriousness about these schools, but it is a happy, healthy seriousness that is deeply inspiring.

One of the most damaging phrases in schools has been “child-centred education”, first used, I think, in the Plowden Report of 1967 and deriving I suspect, from the “person-centred” counselling of Carl Rogers. I could not disagree more with this model of education. We human beings only make sense when we are God-centred. That’s what worship reminds us of and what we rehearse in worship. The following six areas are ones which I have been developing thoughts around on seriousness if our Mission is to be successful in bringing more people to know Jesus.

Teaching

Our expectations of what children should learn and know about their faith intellectually should be the same as those now being in schools in equivalent areas of the curriculum. Colouring in, glueing and sticking are not educational activities, they are time-fillers. Our teaching and activities with children need to demand the highest they can give and leave them exhausted with exhilaration at their learning. It needs to be content heavy and involve much repetition and memorisation. At the back of Understanding How We Learn, are sections for Teachers, Parents and Students. These sections would be a great starting place for training sessions with youth leaders and Sunday school teachers. The whole of this methodology applies equally to adults. As should our expectation that they will be as challenged intellectually by what we teach as by anything else in their lives.

Piety

Children are natural pray-ers, just as they naturally do all sorts of things. But it often feels like prayer is the only area where we leave them to work things out for themselves. And most don’t. Teaching technologies of prayer, techniques that Christians have developed and used often over centuries is essential. Much memorisation will be involved. There are methods in both the Catholic and Evangelical streams of the church that we could use. Memorisation of the Bible and psalms will be part of this too. Mindfulness is a really good way into this and can begin in the Nursery. I have taught lectiodivina to children from 4-18 years old, not to mention the Jesus Prayer, the Rosary and the Office. This applies equally to adults. People want to be taught how to pray, what the experience of prayer will be like and what they should expect to experience in prayer.

Belonging

Many children and young people like to belong to things, to join, to wear a badge or a uniform. As a Secondary Head teacher I used badges all the time, to communicate key messages and to reward achievement. Adults mocked when I told them that we were introducing coloured, ranked academic gowns of pupil leaders. But the children loved them, longed to wear them and were mortified if they were “de-gowned” for a period for any reason. Sometimes exclusiveness is as important as inclusion. It is hugely encouraging to see Rules of Life, new expressions of community and other ways of belonging springing up in the church.

Spiritual Direction

Far too much direction is actually non-directive person-centred counselling. The Director who will not name sin, or point out the danger of the opportunities for sin is dangerous to souls. But so is the one who won’t push the directee further, to demand more, to question motives and point out patterns of behaviour. Much of the current literature on direction is lamentable, weak on theology, and low in its expectations for spiritual growth and change. There is an unhealthy mystique about Spiritual Direction, mystical experiences are not necessary. Anyone seriously living a Christian life is capable of helping others to do so.

Fasting

Mixing with Pentecostal Christians and Muslims made me ashamed of my weak efforts at fasting. This is such a biblical spiritual discipline, tied so closely to prayer throughout the Bible that our failure to fast must surely be a substantial part of our failure in mission.

Everydayness of prayer and Eucharist

One of the reasons sometimes given for our failures in mission is that children, young people and families are so busy with other hobbies and interests. I am not entirely sure this is true. But if we ourselves act as if our faith is one more leisure choice among many then it will appear that way. From a Catholic-Anglican perspective the importance of the daily Mass, seven days a week, was fundamental to slum ministry. Few of our churches now maintain this. Even where they do the Mass is at times that only the retired or unemployed could attend. When I was at St Andrew’s, Earlsfield, I started a 6:30am Mass on weekdays before I went to school. I was told by some that no one would come. I never celebrated alone. Again, for Catholic Anglicans the Daily Office, seven days a week, for many seven times a day, was at the heart of their ministry. If we think we are too ‘busy’, it is simply because we have lost control of our diaries.

“Young people want more commitment not less.” Wrote the Bishop of Chelmsford (my former pastoral tutor at Theological College). It feels counter intuitive, it is. In education intuition has not served us well. Perhaps we need to be less intuitive in our church life too. The easier we make it, the less important, the less significant it looks. If that is the case why bother?

An Anglican Martyrology

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

Word format:Martyrology 12 09 19 PDF: Martyrology 12 09 19

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

This is an update of a form of martyrology I posted some time ago. It is traditional to read the martyrology liturgically each day. This text is ecumenical but designed particularly for use in the four Anglican Churches of the British Isles.

The base text used was the martyrology compiled by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338 and available online at the website of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. The calendars of each of the four Anglican churches of the British isles contain varied group commemorations, I suggest these entries are read only in the province where they are observed and have indicated that by the use of italics and brackets. However, people, particularly in the Church of England, are woefully ignorant of the history of the other Anglican Churches of our islands and it would be good if all entries for the islands are used in each province. The Roman Catholic dates for saints are also indicated where these vary from Anglican ones, but not all those on the Roman Calendar have an entry. The introductions to the saints and celebrations in the Anglican calendars in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in Exciting Holiness, ed. Brother Tristam SSF, The Canterbury Press, 1997, have been added where a saint did not already appear in the martyrology. These have been adapted to indicate the place and date of death at the beginning, as is traditional at the reading of the martyrology. For the place of death I have generally relied on Wikipedia. For Irish, Welsh and Scottish celebrations not appearing in Exciting Holiness, (they do appear in subsequent editions, I only have the first) I have used the latest edition of Celebrating the Saints, Canterbury Press, 2004. These entries are generally longer than appear in martyrologies and probably need editing down even more than I have done if they are to be read liturgically.

Additional entries from the online martyrology of the Bose community have been used. I would have liked to include (as does the Bose Martyrology) the celebrations of other faith communities, however as these are movable (based often on lunar calendars) that is not easy to do. An online inter-faith calendar could be consulted to add to this martyrology. I would like to add more Celtic and Saxon saints and am working on that. Often it is hard to distinguish between saints with the same name or the same saint with alternative dates for commemoration. Other Sources:For All The Saints – A Calendar of Commemorations for United Methodists, ed. Clifton F. Guthrie, Order of St Luke Publications, Akron, Ohio, 1995. A Calendar of British Saints – Orthodox Synaxarion, Fr Benedict Haigh, Bluestone Books, 2004 Ordo of the Community of the Servants of the Will of God Saints of the Roman Missal, J Michael Thompson, Ligouri, 2012 People’s Companion to the Breviary, The Carmelites of Indianapolis, 1997, Volumes 1 and 2 Troparia and Kondakia, New Skete, 1984 Holy Women, Holy Men, Church Publishing, 2010, in the online edition available in May 2018. Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, ed Shane Claiburne et al, Zondervan, 2010 Blessed Among Us, ed. Robert Ellsberg, Liturgical Press, 2016 New Book of Festivals and Commemorations [Lutheran], Philip F. Pfatteicher, Fortress Press, 2008 Carmelite Propers for the Liturgy of the Hours, http://carmelcanada.org/liturgy/office.pdf Dominican Propers for the Liturgy of the Hours, http://opcentral.org/resources/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Supplement.pdf Propers for Congregations Dedicated to the Precious Blood of Christ Finally, some dates of significance have been added to the entries.

Because non- Christians (eg Gandhi) have been included the phrase “people of good will” has been added to the usual conclusion of the reading of the martyrology. Events which are entered and are not people should be read at the beginning of the reading of the martryology when announcing the liturgical day. In adding to the base text used consideration has been given to the length of the reading for the whole day, so some of the many saints mentioned in that have been removed; and to ensuring the presence of more Anglican, women, married, and non-European entries. The original text included many nineteenth century saints and founders of religious communities these have largely been removed. This martyrology naturally reflects my own interests and prejudices. To reduce the length of the reading of the martyrology readings may be alternated in a two year cycle, first and third etc entry in Year 1 and so on. Obviously any entry that is going to be observed liturgically ought to be used.

The reading of the martyrology traditionally occurred at the end of Prime, with the reading for the following day being read. In reading the martyrology in Latin the day in the lunar cycle was also announced. I don’t know any communities who do this in English. The martyrology may be read at the end of a daytime hour, before Compline or separately. For those praying only Morning and Evening Prayer it might helpfully occur after Evening Prayer for the following day.

Reading The Martyrology in the Daily Office
The Martyrology for the nth day of X the year of Our Lord 20XX.
The liturgical day is then given, eg. Monday in the eighth week after Trinity, or the first entry in the martyrology if that supersedes it.]Other events at the top of the day’s entry are also read. Any entry that is to be observed liturgically is mentioned first.
After the Reading from the martyrology:
And elsewhere, many other holy women and holy men, saints of the Most High God and people of good will.
V. Precious in the eyes of the Lord. (Alleluia.)
R. Is the death of the faithful. (Alleluia.)
Let us pray. May holy Mary and all the saints pray for us to the Lord, that we may obtain from Him, help and salvation, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Common Worship Daily Prayer: readings for Terce, Sext and Nkne

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

For those who pray Terce, Sext and None daily (as suggested on page 20 of Common Worship Daily Prayer) there is a need to supplement the provision of readings for these additional Little Hours. I suggest in Ordinary Time that the four week cycle at Prayer During the Day is divided to become a two week cycle providing readings for two Hours and that the very short reading is used at the third Hour. In the seasons the weekly cycle and the very short reading provide for two Hours, a sentence from the Gospel for the day could be used at the third Hour.

On saints days the Little Hours are of the feria on memorias/Lesser festivals; on Festivals and Principal Feasts readings are needed which the table provided here gives references to in the rather rich provision available in CWDP. Three of the longer readings are suggested for each Common and one of the short readings. The first number, in bold, is a page reference to CWDP. Readings for the LH CWDP

New Wine and the Little Hours

October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

I met her at the New Wine Leaders’ Conference in Harrogate in 2017. We got on straight away, after she told me there was no doubting that the friend and colleague I was with was my son, “You have the same smile!” (sorry Dave, although technically possible, I suppose … ). We have kept in touch ever since although we were at different weeks of New Wine United in the summer. We communicate about prayer (and books, sometimes, books on prayer). She has changed her routine to get up earlier and have time with the Lord in the early morning. It has taken about three months to change sleeping habits to feel really comfortable with this. But it still feels like something is missing she tells me. “I have a great prayer time in the morning, I listen, and sing along to worship songs, I pray in tongues I read my Bible on a Bible in a Year plan. But then when I get to work I am just as crotchety and irritable as ever.”

St Paul tells us to “pray constantly” (1 Thess. 5: 17), continually, without ceasing. Easier said than done. There are three techniques that I think can really help this. I have written much about them here on this blog, I won’t put links here, you can search the blog below. Briefly on two of them:

Mindfulness: two elements turn mindfulness practice into prayer. One is recognising that the breath, our breathing is God’s Holy Breath, pneuma, breathing in us. The second is awareness of God’s presence when we achieve stillness, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Ps 46:10). Amazingly, it is possible to have this sense of the presence of God whatever you are doing and however busy you are.

Jesus Prayer: when this prayer becomes part of us, when it prays itself in us we can pray constantly, at all times. Again, it doesn’t matter how busy or preoccupied we are, if we allow it the prayer will rise. It is however, another technique that the Tradition gives us that I want to draw attention to here. The practice of extending the Daily Office across the day by praying short little Offices or Hours, during the course of the day. Punctuating the day with prayer.

Since I first wrote about praying the Little Hours my own practice has moved on a little as has that of some of those I accompany. I have also been struck by how this tradition of praying a sevenfold Office has emerged in two recently published books. The historian Eamon Duffy has published a collection of essays Royal Books and Holy Bones – Essays in Medieval Christianity (Bloomsbury 2018) which includes an excellent essay on The Psalms and Lay Piety. Like all of Duffy’s writing it is accessible and readable. There has been much research on the medieval Primers, collections of prayers for the laity. They are usually very liturgically based books and and always contain a good deal of psalmody. Often psalmody for use at the Little Hours – Terce, Sext and None – used to punctuate the day with prayer. Despite churches of the Reformation removing Little Hours from their official liturgies, and the Roman Catholic Church only mandating clergy to pray one Daytime Hour since the early seventies, there is a remarkable hunger for these Hours. They just won’t go away because they meet a need.

As an example the unofficial Lutheran Office Book, The Daily Prayer of the Church, edited by Pastor Philip Pfatteicher (Lutheran University Press, 2005) includes forms for Terce, Sext and None, as well as an alternative single Daytime Hour. For each section of the Daily Office lectionary of the BCP 1979 it includes a short extract which could be used as the reading at these little Hours to extend the prayer into the day, an ingenious idea. It is an excellent book containing a rich resource of hymnody for the Office from the Lutheran tradition. The two recent books I recommend are:

The first is from The Episcopal Church in the United States but has been published in England with a preface by the former bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard. Daily Prayer for All Seasons – A contemporary Benedictine prayer companion (Canterbury Press, 2016). (DPFAS). Fr Christopher Woods reviewed this for the Church Times, here. Derek Olsen of St Bede’s Publications writes a somewhat harsh review here from a liturgical purists point of view. He is right on almost every substantive point but wrong about the helpfulness of the book. DPFAS is not a liturgical book, it is a devotional prayer book which uses liturgical structures, seasonal, weekly and daily, to provide a framework for prayer. For each day eight sets of prayers are provided, one for each of the canonical Hours (Prime, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline, Vigils), each provided with a an overarching theme used in every season:

Prime – Praise

Lauds – Discernment

Terce – Wisdom

Sext – Perseverance and Renewal

None – Love

Vespers – Forgiveness

Compline – Trust

Vigils – Watch

A set of prayers is provided for each Season of the church’s year and two sets for Ordinary Time. The prayers are designed for private use at Prime and Vigils but corporate use at the other Hours. Here are two examples of provision, the first in Advent and the second in Eastertime. I think this would make an excellent resource for punctuating the day with prayer, for drawing from the liturgical tradition but doing so in a somewhat more devotional way. I have recommended it to several people and so far have had very positive feedback.

The second recommendation is a book edited by Sister Stan, a Sister of Charity in Ireland who is something of a star. It is a beautifully crafted book, published by Columba Press. Awakening Inner Peace provides a four week cycle of little offices for each of the eight canonical hours for every day. There is no seasonal material. The short but helpful introduction also provides suggestions for using particular hours at various points in life or in need.

For each ‘Hour’ there is a verse or two of psalmody, a very short meditation in poetic form and a final verse of intention. The shortness of these Hours would provide a momentary pause in the working day or on retreat, the meditations are simple but profound. Here are two example pages.

Even the traditional forms of the Little Hours take only a few minutes. These devotional forms even less. Breaking the day for these prayer pauses asserts the fact that there is something more significant than what we have to do, or the demands of the diary. It asserts our control over our diaries and over our busy-ness and the sovereignty of God in our lives. We cannot say “Jesus is Lord” and then ignore him from morning til evening. Busyness is just a state of mind. It is about choices we make. We could all of us fill our days many times over. Praying the Hours can help us reduce stress and anxiety by reminding us of what is important and also by giving us an ‘Office’ that is completed at the end of the day. Many of us do jobs that are never really finished. Finishing, completing the Office can be immensely satisfying.

The Daily Office is often said to be about sanctifying time. The interesting thing for me in my present job is that it is also about sanctifying place. I have prayed the Little Hours in car parks, shopping centres, garden centres, empty offices in schools, town halls, the diocesan office, across the diocese of Liverpool and on trains and in my car. If these books don’t appeal, and the structure of the traditional offices seems too much, just pray your way through Psalm 119 a section at a time. This is what Christians have done for much of Christian history. My New Wine friend has only just begun this practice but already she has messaged me several times to say that her day feels so much better, so much more fully offered to the Lord.

The Little Hours: a gift for the forgetful

October 18, 2019October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

First published in May 2018.

At Plum Village, the Buddhist monastery founded by Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hahn, when a clock strikes or a gong sounds, everyone stops, breathes deeply and remembers a brief gatha or mindfulness verse:

“Listen, listen,this wonderful bell
brings me back to my true self.”

We human beings are forgetful, half-asleep creatures. Mindfulness is nothing more than waking up, becoming attentive and aware. You can download a mindfulness bell to sound on your computer. I used to have it ringing in my office when I was a Headteacher, an old fashioned chiming clock can serve the same purpose. Stop and breathe deeply three times. The Christian tradition, too, has many ways to remind us to stay awake. One of these is the Liturgy of the Hours. For some people, two longish liturgies a day, in the morning and evening, are sufficient, as in the Book of Common Prayer.

For some of us, however, little and often is best. One way many Anglicans have found to pray, in this little-and-often sort of way, is through the ‘Little Hours’ of the Daily Office: Terce, Sext and None, at the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day. One of the Anglican books used for this, for many decades was the Monastic Diurnal, a translation of the Latin Benedictine Office, produced in 1933, and edited by Canon Winfred Douglas. Writing in the Preface to The Monastic Diurnal he said:

“The Monastic Office was planned from the first for busy men [sic] … for our frequently overburdened parochial Clergy, it is an ideal Office because it combines great variety with comparative brevity.”
(Monastic Diurnal, OUP, 1933 v-vi).

From the very beginning of the separation of the church in England from Rome, many people have supplemented the Offices of the Prayer Book with liturgical devotions at other times of the day. In 1627 John Cosin (later Bishop of Durham), then just thirty years of old, published his Collection of Private Devotions for The Hours of Prayer. It is a beautiful combination of Prayer Book liturgy and language, providing forms of prayer for Prime, Terce, Sext, None and Compline, translated from traditional sources, as well as many other prayers and devotions.

We know too that the community at Little Gidding prayed the psalms throughout the course of the day. There were, no doubt, many other examples of the punctuation of the day with psalmody (see Anglican Devotion, C.J. Stranks, SCM 1961, for the period from the Reformation to the Oxford Movement). The Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century continued this tradition. Many clergy prayed the Western Office in Latin, but soon books of Hours appeared to enable the traditional canonical hours to be prayed in English, using the texts and Calendar of the Prayer Book, and usually providing for the Little Hours to be prayed alongside the Prayer Book Offices of Matins and Evensong. Versions of these books are so numerous that it would be a long list if it was reproduced here. Two traditions predominated among Anglo-Catholics: the monastic version of the Office, as in Canon Douglas’s book, and more popularly, translations of the traditional western Office (before the 1911 reform) which made provision for the recitation of Psalm 119 over the course of each day at the Little Hours. These Offices found their way into the Cuddesdon Office Book and the very popular Prime and Hours and The Priest‘s Book of Private Devotion and are recommended in Fr Whatton’s magnificent The Priest’s Companion. For the laity they appeared, in simplified form, in A Manual of Catholic Devotion.

It was the reforms of the Second Vatican Council that reduced the normal Office to a fivefold form, with a single daytime Hour, and Prime removed. However, The Divine Office, the current western (Roman) rite does make provision for Terce and None. Even now, some people use the old books, including The Anglican Breviary (a translation into Prayer Book English of the post-1911 Breviary) to pray a sevenfold, or even eightfold, Office.

I often hear the claim that a Catholic renewal in our Church is not a management issue but a spiritual one. I believe that all renewal needs good management. St. Paul was highly efficient.

Next week, when I am at the New Wine Leaders’ Conference I have no doubt that I shall be part of something that is superbly managed. When Anglican Catholicism was at its strength it was a serious enterprise. Fasting, as Newman and Pusey recognised, was an essential part of the spiritual life. The praying at regular intervals during the day was the foundation of the energy and mission of countless heroic priests and laypeople. It seems unlikely to me that spiritual renewal will come unless we too embrace these disciplines, as our predecessors did, joyfully.

Like many Catholic Anglicans I have been praying the five-fold Divine Office for almost all of my adult life. Using it as a supplement to Common Worship. In 2014 I added Terce, using Psalm 119 over a week, to end the quiet desk time after my morning prayers and before the workday begins. In Eastertide 2016 I added None to the daily round and in September 2016 a brief Office of Prime. I do so using Psalm 119 to link myself to Catholic and Anglican tradition. I recently put together a little card to tuck into my Breviary with some simple music and the distribution of the psalms. Common Worship: Daily Prayer also refers to the Little Hours and they could easily be prayed using it. Here are the cards:

(Music for the opening verses is from Abbot Alan Rees OSB)Word version here. (You will need to install the St Meinrad fonts to read the music, available here)PDF here.

Psalm 119 arranged for praying over a week at Terce (or any other Hour) here, in the Grail translation.

The obligation to pray Morning and Evening Prayer is a serious one for Anglican clergy, and they should not be omitted except for a substantial reason. I find it deeply moving on my travels as Superior of the Sodality, and in the diocese of Liverpool as Director of Education, to pray with my sister and brother priests and to know they are praying day by day. Some people choose to add to the basic obligation the praying of the Office of Readings, Daytime and Night Prayer. This is a personal choice, so not of obligation. Just as with fasting, there is always a danger of scrupulosity or adding these devotions as ego-centred ‘works’, this is why a Spiritual Director is so important. We must never forget that we are freely saved and can never merit the salvation Jesus brings – we don’t have to, and can’t, earn it. However, if done lovingly and freely, like a lover who wishes to phone his beloved during the day, not once but many times, or when in the beloved’s presence can hardly resist their touch, this can be a beautiful way of enjoying the divine Presence throughout the day. It is not just a cure for forgetfulness, but a satisfying of the desire and need to be with God intensely.

Just as with fasting there is the suggestion that somehow modern people are not quite up to praying so often. That we are too busy, our lifestyles too full. I am not at all sure about this. I particularly object to the use of the word busy. I think we need to think more carefully about how we use, and control the use of our time. Surfing the web, watching TV, even listening to the news can suck up time. We could all fill our days many times over, but we can, mostly, choose the things that we want to do. Why not choose to spend a few extra minutes with God? If prayed quickly each Office can be said in three or four minutes, it would be hard to make them last longer than ten. Today, for example, I prayed Terce sat in my car on a street in St Helens, Sext on the same street, after the meeting I was attending and None, outside the school I was due to visit in Garston in Liverpool, a little later. These are, for me, refreshing pauses, Psalm 119 a gentle brook, gently gurgling its way through my day and renewing me.

“Happy indeed is the man … whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who ponders his law day and night. He is like a tree that is planted beside the flowing waters.” (Ps 1)

The Little Hours are little mindfulness bells, reminding us of the great story of salvation told in Scripture, but they are also a loving touch in the working day with the One who made us and loves us. As Fr Jonathan Graham CR wrote,

“Psalm 119 is a love song.Not a passionate love song; certainly not.It is not the song of love at first sight,nor of the bitter sweet of emotion and desire.It is the song of happy married life.That is not to say that it is, literally, the song of a poet happily wedded; but it breathes all the way through the charmed monotony of a life vowed to another;it repeats with endless variety and sweet restraintthe simple inexpressible truth that can never grow weary or stale– I love thee. Thou, thee, thine;every verse of the poem, except the three which introduce it,contains thou, thee or thine.And a very large number of them echo: I, me, mine.Well might its author find the sum total of his song in the high priestly prayer of Jesus:All mine are thine and thine are mine.”

Serious? Well, yes, but joyful, light and energising, if prayed freely and as a free gift to Him.

How I do my daily lectio? #todaysgospel

October 18, 2019October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

First posted May 2018.

Every day I publish a daily gospel tweet #todaysgospel, on the gospel of the daily Mass / Daily Eucharistic Lectionary, a tweet length distillation of my daily lectio.

Several people have asked me how I do this form of prayer. Lectio is simply the Latin word for reading, in this context it is short for lectio divina, the sacred reading that is the traditional way of chewing on, and digesting, Scripture. Here is a very good paper from a Carmelite author on lectio. The Wikipedia article is also good.

As part of my lectio I use the prayers on this card.

The table indicates the four traditional phases, each column is one writer’s interpretation of the traditional stages. (Unfortunately I haven’t kept a record of whose they are – apologies to the originators.) The Collect is usually attributed to St Jerome.

I reckon forty minutes is about ideal for working with one piece of Scripture. About ten minutes for each stage. I find it difficult to find 40 minutes in one go and so have developed a way of dividing up the phases into just before going to bed and when I get up. At weekends I am more likely to be able to find the time to work with a reading in one sitting. I can’t say I prefer one way to the other, they are just different.

Before I say Compline, the final prayers of the day, just before bed, I read the Gospel for the following day, I then do the lectio stage. I may consult a commentary or two, probably look at the Greek text. I often see if one phrase stands out and, if it does, write that on a card that I will put on my bedside table and then carry with me the following day. At the end of Compline after the anthem to Our Lady I read the Gospel out loud, often from the Nick King translation of the NT. I then do the meditatio phase, almost Ignatian in my approach, imagining the scene (‘composition’ as Ignatius would say). I imagine or hear Jesus speaking to me. I try and picture the scene in all its detail, temperature, smells, sounds, light. And then go to bed. It is wonderful to have heard the Lord in this way just before sleeping.

In the morning the card will be the first thing I see, with two cups of tea I will do the oratio stage of the lectio, the praying. I talk to Jesus about the passage. At this stage I may write a draft version of the tweet, which is often addressed to Jesus. It is Jesus that I feel very much with me as I do this. Perhaps if I used texts other than the gospels it would feel differently. Next I read the Gospel again, out loud, usually in the original Greek, which means I need to read it slowly. I pray the Office out loud whenever I can which seems much better to me. I then have the contemplatio phase, the just dwelling with the Scripture. Not so much thinking about it as dwelling in it, or it dwelling in me. I don’t expect any particular outcome. I often read the gospel in another language, Latin (which I know best), French or German. This reading really slows me down. I will carry the card around with me during the day, if I am driving putting it where I can see it.

At Mid-day prayer I, again, use the same text as the reading. After the Office at Mid-day I pray the Ignatian Examen and find the gospel passage often informs that. One of the re-discoveries we are making in education is the absolute importance of repetition and memorisation. Repeating the same reading five times (including Mass) in one day, out loud, as well as silent praying of it really helps the reading sink deep in me and fixes it in my mind. Chewing on the passage at length like this is really rewarding, whether it produces good milk is for others to judge and to be seen, or not, in my life. But as a way of praying I recommend it.

I am really grateful for the positive comments on the tweets and will continue them. It helps me to have to reduce the thoughts to something succinct. Scripture is an endless mine, I hope even these little fragments are worthy of it. It is a great joy to think of those same readings (in the Daily Eucharistic / Mass Lectionary) being chewed on around the world.

Mission and Mindfulness

October 18, 2019October 18, 2019Father Richard Peers Leave a comment

An old post lightly edited.

From my earlier post, here:

“it is the missional problem of our time that needs most thought and reflection and most occupies my mind. Our failure to evangelise, to communicate the gospel, particularly to the young, and the decline of the church. I have a series of posts planned that will address this problem in four key areas for further investigation:

1 Mindfulness for Mission: there is no God-shaped hole

2 Learning for Mission: it’s all about memory

3 Seriousness for Mission: the easier we make it the less attractive it is

4 Morality for Mission: why people think the church is immoral”

Some time in 1989/90 I was due to meet the then Bishop of Winchester at Wolvesey, his home next to the Cathedral, having been recommended for training for ordination. As I walked across the Cathedral green coming towards me were monks and nuns from the Theravadan Buddhist community at Chithurst. I knew them well having made several retreats there, and it seemed like a good sign to see them as they began a lengthy walking pilgrimage. I can’t remember when I first became interested in meditation, or indeed started meditating. It may have been reading Thomas Merton as a fourteen year old, or perhaps it was talking to Fr Peter Bowe at nearby Douai Abbey? Either way I am glad that right at the beginning of my preparation for ministry as a priest that important thread was present. I would never have guessed then how significant the teaching of what is now almost universally called “Mindfulness” would be in my life. It is easy to sneer or at least feel an inner rolling of the eyes in church or other circles when Mindfulness is mentioned. “Religion-lite” or “just another fad” are phrases I’ve heard. But I am always impressed with the seriousness which participants bring to the training. Formal meditation of this sort is a fundamental part of my life. I have taught it in all the schools I’ve worked in with four to eighteen year olds and with colleagues. It was an essential part of school improvement as a Head teacher and I have taught Mindfulness in parishes, on pilgrimages and on retreats. I can’t possibly meet the demand from across the country for this teaching. I am interested in this and in how this relates to mission. Does mindfulness lead to people meeting Jesus? The simple answer is yes, I have seen it happen. It does this in a number of ways. In the last few years I have developed a two stage process in mindfulness training. In the first stage of four sessions I teach practices which could be used by anyone, regardless of faith or belief, I use no specifically Christian language or imagery and I make clear that the results will be a reduction in stress, relaxation and greater clarity, although meditating to get these results is unhelpful. I then offer additional sessions on specifically Christian forms of meditation, lectio, the Jesus Prayer and recently I’ve added the technique of the Cloud of Unknowing. Interestingly, the expectation is always made clear when these sessions stretch over a number of weeks that some people will not want to attend the explicitly Christian sessions. Usually a few people will tell me at the first session that they are not going to. But what actually happens is that on every occasion, so far, everybody does attend all the sessions. Happily, as a result of doing so, some individuals over the years have begun attending church and have come to faith. I have come to believe – and it really is only from my conversations with participants – that there is something about the experience of meditation that prepares people for faith. Over the next year I hope to use feedback forms to get a clearer picture of this, but my working hypothesis is that mindfulness leads to these four experiences all of which are good foundations for faith: 1 – compassion 2 – connectedness 3 – watchfulness 4 – abandonment COMPASSION When people sit still, observe their breathing, notice their thoughts coming and going they always experience something close to a feeling of love. They feel more loving and more loved. Although, very occasionally distressing thoughts and memories do arise this is really quite rare and even then it is within a larger experience of love. CONNECTEDNESS Although mindfulness may appear to be a very solitary, individualistic exercise, focussed on the self, in fact the internal experience is of being less separated and more connected, not just to people but to the physical world. Sitting still and observing the breath is a strongly physical experience. It is not “all in the mind”. WATCHFULNESS I have been undecided on what to call this experience and wondered about ‘awakeness’. In the end I’ve decided on watchfulness because it has Christian history in the Philokalic tradition where the writings of the Philokalia are the writings of the neptic ones, the awake, the watchful. Participants typically describe this as being more alert, or even more alive. Occasionally, in the early stages and often with teenagers, there is a feeling of sleepiness, sleep deprivation is a significant problem, but this usually passes. ABANDONMENT Again, I haven’t been very certain what to call this. Because mindfulness is about noticing things, and particularly noticing thoughts as they arise and as they pass, it increases the ability to let go, to not need to be in control. This is very helpful preparation for abandonment to God. *** Over the last year I have been reading and re-reading Augustine’s Confessions, although he is frequently held up as an example of “conversion experience”, notably his experience in the garden when he hears a voice tell him to “tolle, lege“, take up and read the Bible, in fact his experience is really of a long process of conversion through reflection on his own life. Indeed, that is exactly what the Confessions is, an extended meditation on his own life that Augustine hopes will show not himself but his method of coming to faith. It is not surprising therefore that for Augustine, using the human mind as an analogy for the god-head, our threefold experience of memory, understanding and will is one way of perceiving the existence of the Trinity. We are hard-wired for faith, it is in the structure of our minds not just in our thoughts. One homiletic reflection on mission is that people have a need for God that cannot be met in any way other than by knowing God, this is sometimes referred to as a “God-shaped hole” . This blog post has a good discussion on the origins of this phrase. I am not convinced that the phrase is particularly helpful either missionally or in our understanding of how and why people come to faith, I think (contra some of the comments on that blog) that it does not describe Augustine’s experience. It may be that I am simply trying to say kataphatically what “God-shaped hole” is saying apophatically, but I think the effect of saying it in that different way is quite significant. Frankly, if there is a God-shaped hole most people in our societies don’t feel it, or the need to fill it. Rather, it seems to me that people find not a lack of something in mindfulness but a waking up of a very real, positive part of themselves that has been underused, this is a good biblical image too since Jesus reminds us to “stay awake”. When people experience compassion, connectedness, watchfulness and abandonment, they are experiencing God. In fact I am not convinced of the helpfulness of the distinction made in some spiritual writing between apophatic and kataphatic. John of the Cross’s powerful poem on the Dark Night is notably passionate, and positive in what it says about God. There are two other areas of interest for me which I hope to investigate further. One is the practice of the Cloud’s method of prayer. The slow repetition of a single word. I only began this practice myself a relatively short time ago and have only taught it to groups twice. I need to work further on the teaching of it but I am encouraged that some people reported finding it helpful. The other area is in the teaching of the Jesus Prayer. The form I use myself is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.” Sometimes I omit the latter two words. If I don’t one or of the participants will say that they find thinking of themselves as a sinner difficult. This too must relate in some way to our difficulties in communicating Christian faith, I would like to think more about that. Now, I am not claiming that Mindfulness will lead seamlessly to conversion to Trinitarian faith. Clearly it doesn’t. Buddhists have been practising Mindfulness for centuries without embracing Christianity! Mindfulness is not the whole of conversion and solid teaching of Scripture and doctrine is also needed (part 2 of this series on Mission) but it can be a very helpful preparation. Any bookshop will have rows and rows of books on Mindfulness but very little on Christianity. If we avoid Mindfulness we are losing an important tool for mission. When I teach mindfulness practices from the Christian tradition, lectio, Jesus Prayer, the Cloud’s method, a reaction I regularly hear is that participants had no idea that Christianity has such practices. A final difficulty for us is that people who have had profound experiences in Mindfulness practice are often disappointed by the lack of silence and stillness and the sheer busy-ness they find when they go to church.

Oikodomeo

Growing the Church – the way of holiness

Month October 2019

Abuse in the Church: the book we have all been waiting for

Crashed: a theology of Trump and Brexit

Finding A Moral Way in Economics

***

Queen of the Sciences: Economics or Theology

About Me

Singing Compline and the Lord’s Prayer yn Gymraeg

Liturgy for the Creation Season

A daily psalm for the Creation Season

Mindfulness for Mission: there is no God-shaped hole

Mission: it’s all about memory

Mission and Young People: the easier we make it the less attractive it is

An Anglican Martyrology

Common Worship Daily Prayer: readings for Terce, Sext and Nkne

New Wine and the Little Hours

The Little Hours: a gift for the forgetful

How I do my daily lectio? #todaysgospel

Mission and Mindfulness