No God, No Peace.
Know God, Know Peace.

That’s what the sign outside the Church in the outskirts of Harrogate said. You know how these things are, you turn it over and over in your mind trying to decide whether it is rather trite, sacrificing truth to fit a formula or rather clever with considerable truth about it. In this instance, I’ll leave final arbitration on that to each of you, as you ponder it. I want to move on to what was on the box later the same evening.

In the first programme that I caught a brief ‘slice’ of, Sue Perkins was in India, travelling to the source of the Ganges in search of spiritual enlightenment and yes, Peace. In the segment that I saw, s he talked with a number of people, but always there was a slightly flippant commentary, which was more Sue Perkins the comedienne, than Sue Perkins the seeker after the Spirit. She was bewailing the ‘fact’ that she had to travel 5000 miles to the source of the Ganges, to find peace in the orbit of the God – Mother Ganga. Apparently such peace is not available to those of us who live in the Western World, because of the noise, the bustle and the connectedness. I did pause to wonder if Sue had ever been to Caithness, Sutherland or Ross-shire, but then of course it also begs the question “What is Peace?.

In a rare glimpse of the Sue that lies behind the comedic front, it emerged that she had lost her father about six months previously and had kept herself very busy, quite explicitly to avoid having to deal with her grief at the loss and the empty space that his death had left. Sadly death has become very much a taboo subject for many in Western Society and there are consequently many people who feel uncomfortable talking about it and dealing positively with the loss of someone close and who do exactly what Sue did, hide from it in business. Her comment when communing with Mother Ganga “I’m not a religious person, but I do have a sort of spiritual sense here.” is probably representative of the thinking of many on this subject. I wonder how we as the Christian communities in this part of the world might help people to come to a better understanding of what religious and spiritual practice might do to help them. Recently, I read an obituary of Monsignor Augustine Hoey who, as an Anglican Priest in deprived parts of England, opened the doors of his dimly lit church to local people, where he had placed an open coffin with a mirror in the bottom of it. He invited them to look into the coffin to see who was inside. They were astonished to see themselves and he said: “One day this will be you.”, then after a dramatic pause: “Are you ready?” and after another pause: “Come to confession.” It apparently had a positive effect, though I am not sure that emulating the good Monsignor would work in all of our communities.

The second programme that I caught a snatch of was ‘Bad Habits, Holy Orders’ in which five 19-25 year old, hard living, hard drinking, hard spending, hard partying girls, had somehow agreed to spend a month in a convent in Norfolk, with just £25 for pocket money, no booze and chapel several time a day. The snatch that I saw was the first of four weekly instalments on Channel 5 on Thursdays at 10pm. The newspaper reviewer that I read on Friday was horrified: “How did a show about naughty nuns end up so dull? It’s almost inconceivable how a premise such as ‘Bad Habits, Holy Orders’ could result in TV duller than a four hour sermon, but somehow Channel 5 managed and achieved the seemingly impossible, which is itself a minor miracle.”

For me that’s the point. The miracle is that the elderly members of the Daughters of Divine Mercy, even though they espouse pretty much the opposite values of a lingerie model, an exotic dancer, a nightclub hostess, a clubbing addict and a secretary, simply by the lives that they lead are serving as agents of God’s Grace to five very lost souls. By the time I switched off, one of the girls had said to her diarycam: “I’m not sure if I’ve got the wrong reaction, but I feel like I could make myself at home in this bedroom. Its very calming and very relaxing.” and two had used some of their ‘pocket money’ to buy small gifts for nuns, from a local charity shop. And in all of this none of them had to travel 5000 miles to the source of the Ganges as part of their spiritual journey of transformation, how cool is that?

Finally back to peace and knowledge: May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep you hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of His Son Jesus Christ.

Blessings to you all
James

Yesterday in Tain, we hosted the Easter Ross Inter Church Group’s annual Songs of Praise. The theme that we chose, a couple of days after the autumn equinox, was Harvest. There was a very good crowd who were in fine voice, St Andrew’s church was suitably decorated and there were lovely things to eat afterwards as we shared fellowship in the hall. It was a fitting celebration to mark the end of summer and all the good things that it has brought.

However, the end of one thing marks the beginning of something else. In the case of the seasons, what is beginning is obvious, the end of summer marks the beginning of autumn; but at other times, the end of something seems very much the end and doesn’t readily seem like a beginning. These points are what the spiritual writer Margaret Silf calls ‘Crossing-Places’ and she lists bridges and gateways, causeways and burial grounds – yes burial grounds. Whilst all these types of place can be found in a literal sense, they can also be found in metaphors of what we are facing in our lives; those places where we are crossing from one world to another.

When I was in training for ministry, we spent our summer schools at Kinnoull monastery near Perth and part of the week was a couple of days of silent retreat. I had been reading one of Margaret Silf’s books (Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way) and I went for a walk down the hill from the monastery, through the park, part way across the railway bridge onto an island in the middle of the Tay. From the beach at the upstream end, I could seem the traffic on the road bridge, hear the trains on the railway bridge, and see the ford back to the mainland and the old cemetery. I suddenly realised that I was at the confluence of many crossing places and as I reflected I began to see that perhaps the lack of certainty about where I thought I might be heading in ministry might not simply be waiting on God, but a more active trying not to hear what God was saying and a failure to commit. Perhaps not quite in the same league as Jonah’s heading off in the opposite direction when God asked him to go to Nineveh (as we heard in the Hebrew Scriptures on Sunday), but a reluctance to accept God’s will all the same.

Crossing-places can be difficult, something to do with crossing into the unknown. Imagine how the disciples felt when the leader that they had followed and come to rely on was suddenly taken from them. They saw it as an ending, but never in their wildest dreams did they see it as a new beginning. Even when three days later Jesus started His post-resurrection appearances, it took them some time, and a certain persistence on Jesus’ part, to grasp the new beginning and run with it.

We arrive at crossing-places: when we come up against resistance along our chosen path or barriers which give us a choice – to fall back in despair or break through into something new. We arrive at crossing-places when we suddenly find ourselves in a new and perhaps frightening stage of our lives or face the challenge of new demands or loss of control over what we are doing or where we are going. We arrive at crossing-places when we are forced to face our own mortality, including the death of our dreams and wonder about what it all means and whether we have missed something in it all.

All the congregations in the north-east of our Diocese are at crossing-places, one way or another. New ministry is anticipated, just beginning or temporarily postponed. Any or all of the descriptions in the previous paragraph may apply and the challenge for all of us is to move beyond what has ended into what is starting to emerge as a new beginning. We stand at the threshold of the growth that those new beginnings offer. The nights may be “fair drawin’ in” as we move into autumn, but the autumn fruits in the hedgerows don’t just mark the end of the long days of summer, but the start of a new season full of anticipation and promise and an unshakeable hope in God’s goodness to us.

Blessings to you all

James

I have been involved in two events in the past few weeks, which have been particularly uplifting and encouraging. The first was the Lairg Churches Together Summer Club, which attracted about 35 children to Lairg Community Centre from 7th-9th August. The second was the evensong to at which I was licensed as Priest-in Charge of the Episcopal congregations in Dornoch, Lairg and Tain on 20^th August, which packed out St Andrew’s in Tain, somehow fitting in about 90 people. Both attracted large crowds, but I am much more interested in the fact that they were both very much ecumenical events.

The LCT Summer Club employed the talents of Church of Scotland, Free Church, Community Fellowship and Episcopal members to provide a wonderful mix of activity, games, singing, teaching and much more, in a profoundly spirit-filled atmosphere. The adult helpers had as much fun as the children, learned as much as the children and felt God’s love amongst them as much as the children.

“He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’” (Matt 18:2-5)

At my licensing there were clergy from the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church as well as from the Episcopal Church. There were lay people from pretty much every denomination and those who for all I know don’t count themselves as Christians. The 18 strong choir assembled by Jamie Campbell was drawn from many different backgrounds. … And a good time was had by all in (you guessed it) a profoundly spirit-filled atmosphere.

This last was in a week when we had heard so much in the media about division, hatred and prejudice, yet it was the lack of all three that struck me about these two wonderful and well attended events. Both remind us that we have so much more in common that we have dividing us, if only we allow ourselves to see it, to feel it and to live out our oneness in Christ.

At the service last Sunday evening, one of the intercessory prayers was a favourite of mine from the Scottish Prayer Book, that captures my feelings exactly:

O GOD the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that, as there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

May God bless you all no matter who you are.

James