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I always enjoy and am inspired by doing the Serum discussions at Greenbelt. If I describe what we do it does not sound like much in terms of ‘putting on an event’ – we welcome everyone,  explain some simple ground rules, have someone give a very brief ‘thought for the day’ and ask a question which is then handed over to the small groups sitting around the tables to discuss and explore before feeding back at the end – yet I am always surprised by how such a simple formula can produce so profound an experience, “humbling and powerful” in the words of the journalist from the Guardian who attended last year.   On reflecting why this is the case I think it is a combination of tackling some of the biggest questions you can ask in an environment of respectful listening, where you are not out to win the argument but to share and learn from different perspectives and  experiences and in so doing start to find commonality as well as difference with others. This year we asked three different questions on the three occasions serum took place: how do our beliefs (whatever these happen to be) relate to and shape the way we actually behave?; do we only really search for god when we are desperate rather than comfortable?; is life all about winning and death all about losing?  In the process of discussing these questions you raise others which go deeper into the issue.

Re. life and death/winning and losing, my group asked how can we fully live in the reality of death which comes to us all, what does a ‘good life’ look like? what does a ‘good death’ look like? How can we process grief and loss?  Would the practice of wakes help us to come to terms with the reality of death by being in the presence of a dead body – how this can offer a strange comfort in that the person is no longer present, it is just the body that is left?

My experience of this discussion was that with the help of the others in my group we were able to look at something we don’t often look at together, a topic that is often avoided and can make us feel uncomfortable.  Serum provided us with some parameters in which to undertake this exploration, to take part in a considered and respectful reflection where the challenge of different perspectives and experiences can be heard in a non-defensive, non-confrontational manner.  At its best this is a process that I find converting in that it causes me to go back and question the way I see things.  It also provides a space in which I begin to find some common ground with others, that by sharing individual experience and thoughts it starts to become possible to share meanings and interpretations of that experience that translate across the divide.

For those interested in these kinds of discussions serum is happening every other Wednesday starting next week – see link for more details.

POSTED 04.09.10 BY: Vanessa | Comments (2)

Thinking again of the detail within the virtues spiritual practices and postures document, I am struck by how I and others I know struggle with the false self.  This is the projection of who we want to be, rather than who we are, which we strive to make real which results in us being very hard on ourselves and others because it is centred on our ego – on our must prove ourselves to achieve in life.  This is because of a very deep lie – that we need to achieve for God to love us – conditional love – where to the contrary God is the unconditional love that helps us to change, where we are awakened to a change that is about being more of our real self, and getting away from our false self. Our struggles of countering the construction of a false-self are very difficult – because of our our cultures obsession with consumption, competition and conditional love is all about nurturing a false-self – existing at the surface of the now (the title of my talk at Greenbelt this year).

In his book New Seeds of Contemplation page 34-5,  Thomas Merton said this:

Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory personal false-self. This is the man I want to be but cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him, and to be unknown by God, is altogether too much privacy.  My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside of God’s will and God’s love, outside of reality and outside of life, and such a self cannot help but be an illusion.  We are not very good at recognising illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. The ones we are born with and which speeds the roots of sin.  All sin starts from the assumption that my false self – the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires – is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.  Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences for power, honour, knowledge and love, to clothe this false-self  and construct its nothingness into something objectively real.  I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world  – as if I were an invisible body that only became visible when something visible covered its surface.  But there is o substance under the things of which I am clothed.  I am hollow, and my structures of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation.  I am objectified in them, but they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed – and when they are gone – there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness to tell me I am my own mistake.  The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God, for what ever is in God is really identical with God for God’s infinite simplicity admits no division and no distinction.  Therefore, I cannot hope to find myself anywhere expect in God. Ultimately the only way I can be myself is to become identified with God in whom is hidden the reason and the fulfillment of my existence.

I think Merton names here our very real struggle, and by implications, shows why it is crucial that Christianity needs to be about inner freedom of the self alongside outer freedom.  This is why we need spiritual practices, virtues and postures that help us maintain an inner freedom – because even our churches of late – neglect this need for inner discipleship.  To face the false self, we need to seek for God who speaks to us from within as much as we should be seeking for God’s presence in the world and outside of ourselves.  To finish I love this quote from John Finley:

Spiritual practices are a commitment to a daily rendezvous with God where there is no agenda but love to transform our hearts and awaken us.

POSTED 16.08.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (7)

Since Aaron’s post about how transformative he’s been finding the virtues postures and practices, and the discussion it started about anger, I’ve been doing a bit of research. I’m troubled by Old Testament wrath / New Testament mercy ‘flip-side of God’ theology. I don’t believe God changed, ‘like shifting shadows’ as James says, nor that God has moods or gets provoked and vindictive.

So I looked up some Hebrew words for ‘anger’ used in the bible last week, and found that physical imagery is inherent in many – aph depicts flaring nostrils; charah and chemah are about heated indignation. God is often described (about forty instances across the Old Testament) roused to wrath of the nostril-flaring variety. This troubles me.

But something that puts God’s wrathful moments in context for me is the as-frequent phrase ‘slow to anger’, also written as ‘long-suffering’, and to me that deliberately illustrates exactly how I’d aspire to see myself deal with anger when it flares in me, in my true, most whole or healthy self, just as with moments of gluttony, selfishness, pride or apathy. Hence ‘be still and know’, ‘wait on the Lord’, and ‘flee from anger and bitterness’.

I think Jesus was doing this when he crouched and drew in the dust, instead of reacting at once to the people ready to stone the woman they’d caught in the middle of adulterous sex. I think he was asserting space for momentary, flared-up anger to diffuse, both theirs and possibly his own.

Also, the very fact that these are physical words presents their illustrative quality to me. I am not massively into turning everything into metaphor, but I do think it’s safe to say God is not being described to us as a being with actual nostrils to flare, or blood pressure to rise. Nor, I want to suggest, is angry action innate to God’s being – God is love. God is not justice, – God holds and wields all justice. But he does not simply hold and wield love. He is love.

I happen to agree with Christopher Jamison and the Desert Fathers he cites, that anger isn’t really a good sign of anything. I don’t think getting angry is ever really just about the thing that we think, in the moment, that it’s about. I think I, and all of us to a greater or lesser degree, are sitting on a big old keg of old hurts and injustices. And when we get angry about things in a particular instant, I think that keg of anger comes into play.

A couple of mooters pointed out to me the danger here of getting into dualistic territory: ‘anger = bad’; ‘getting frustrated = bad’. I’m glad to have the community round me to navigate this territory.

And righteous energy for a cause is true and a good thing – I’m a bit of a cause-carrier sometimes – but when it’s provoked by anger, I have to take time to think and to still that, until it has aired and become something more calm and constructive.

To stay in my anger is to sit in the murkier bits of my psychology. To feel it, acknowledge it, but to be slow to it and patient with it when it comes – these I think reflect a God of love – healthy care of myself and exploration of all my feelings and their roots, but also therefore enabling my outward actions to be wholly love.

This is ‘slow to anger’ – taking the space to consider both my own reaction, and also to consider whoever has provoked me as a whole human being, with more going on than I can justifiably feel irritated with. Love is not only for some human beings, according to what they’ve done. “To know all is to forgive all”. Even love for one person, a victim, I don’t believe should ever provoke us to retribution towards another. And that pause to bring us back to a place of complete love, I think, is what Jesus was doing when he wrote in the sand for a while.

POSTED 24.06.10 BY: grace | Comments (5)

Encountered this sign on the train from Waterloo to Clapham Junction, grafitting the space usually taken up by an advert. Given all the uncertainty following the election, ecological, economic and other concerns, I think we are seeing an increased search for meaning in the UK. People are increasingly finding a culture defined by the market and a life style dependent on consumptive gratification as unrewarding. I hope this questing will open up the spiritual landscape.  Given all the uncertainty, this is an opportunity for the church to start talking about a more virtuous society and that would called hope.

This Sunday is Pentecost, the third great celebration of the Christian Year – where we remember the work of the person of the Holy Spirit. What would Britain look like if there was a movement of the Spirit now?  That would be interesting…

POSTED 21.05.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (4)

“Atheism and unemployment prevail as the lasting legacy of Communism in the villages around Leipzig, East Germany. But there is hope! Meet a truly radical modern-day, monastic community which has moved into the picturesque village of Ramsdorf. They pray five times a day, renovate a derelict school, play football and offer free art-classes for the locals. “Our neighbours just call us ‘The Christians’ because we’re the only ones they’ve ever known,” says Markus Laegel. “It’s scary because the way we live will define Jesus to them.”

POSTED 30.04.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

From the beginning of May, we will be exploring and seeking to implement some virtues, spiritual practices and postures in our weekly wednesday and sunday activities. Aaron has written a comprehensive proposal for this which will be available in the community section of this website. There are also a number of books we recommend, including Abbot Jamison’s Finding Happiness which digs deep with the whole area of virtues and spiritual practices. We highly recommend those leading worship services or weds evening activities getting your own copy. To get your own copy of this book, we will be selling a few copies through the bookstall at sunday services, and through the mootique.  For those leading services, we have bought two books for you to use – so please let Raewyn know if you need them.

For those involved in the community, who have not got a copy of the proposal, or want to comment on it, go to the community section of this site and click on the community forum (make sure you have logged in), where you can download a copy and make comments.

POSTED 25.04.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

At the second last community meeting (28 Feb 2010) Ian and I were tasked to research a possible set of virtues, spiritual practices and postures that could, after a period of consultation, be owned by the community as the practical application of the rhythm of life – not as a prescriptive, homogenising set of directives, but a flexible, personally applied set of guidelines. Well, the proposal is now in its second draft, and copies of it will be given out at the annual Community Council meeting on 25 April.

It has been fascinating and deeply resourcing to have spent time exploring and writing this with Ian. I’m very excited about the conversations that it will provoke over the next few months, and, of course, the potential benefits this proposal could bring us, personally and communally – if it we decide to adopt it. I say ‘if’ not because I don’t believe in it, or because I’m not entirely behind it – because I am; I say it because the whole idea of adopting a community-wide application of the rhythm of life should make us stop and think. The implications are, quite simply and without the slightest hyperbole, life changing.

However, according to those in the know, change like this doesn’t come cheaply. In fact, it is said by many that you have to need it so badly that you’re willing to consider nothing less than a changed consciousness – an entirely different way of being. This is encouraging, however, when you consider that Jesus seems to have had something to offer to those hungry for change in their lives – the weary and heavy burdened. I’m beginning to suspect again that he might have something to say to me.

There are a variety of discussions and events coming up when you will be able to familiarise yourself with the whole area spiritual practices, the need for something like this in Moot, and, also, add your voice. Such is the nature of our governance system that, as long as we have a quorum, decisions will be made at Community Council meetings, regardless of how many people turn up. However, when it comes time to actually make decisions about this, it will make all the difference if we’ve been engaging at depth with each other and know how we feel about the subject.

Look out for the spiffy new signpost image at the top of this post – it signifies a consultation event for the virtues, practices and postures proposal.

Events

Finding Happiness service (2 May)

Exploration (Wednesday nights)

POSTED 15.04.10 BY: Aaron Kennedy | Comments (4)

It is not often you get thought through explorations, but the BCC have outdone themselves on this one. In a programme now available in the UK through BBC Iplayer, is a programme seeking to explore the significance of Christ’s death on the Cross. They follow through the interpretation of this event from Gregory of the Desert Fathers right through to Moltmann and the horrors of the Second World War. I highly commend watching this, link here.

I like the way the programme explores the different focii of redemptive theology v incarnational theology through the experience of particular Christian communities in particular times.  If only some churches gave this level of understanding, there may be less impoverished understandings of the faith!

My only criticism is that the programme has not explored the contribution from those coming from more liberationist perspectives, from the reflection of the poor and marginalised which goes further than the thinking of Moltmann.  I am particularly taken by the work of the Roman Catholic Theologian James Alison, who through his experiences of marginalisation, explore the significance of the cross not only in sharing in the suffering of humanity, but further, that Jesus doesn’t die because the Creator God is Angry, but rather, dies for our anger, through the ultimate expression of the love of God. For more on James Alison follow the link here

POSTED 02.04.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

Just been to Moot Big Service on Passion Sunday exploring the themes of light and darkness.  Very moving.  well done Meghan and Jocelyn.

POSTED 21.03.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (2)

I’m really pleased to say that the first book of the Series Ancient Faith Future Mission is now on Sale in a North American version in the USA. This includes the original authors Rowan Williams, Stephen Cottrell, Ian Adams, Sue Wallace, Karen Ward, Brian McLaren Richard Giles, Carl Turner, Phyllis Tickle, Paige Blair, Michael Volland, Philip Roderick and Tessa Holland, Karen Ward, Simon Rundell and Abbot Stuart Burns. But additionally includes chapters by Thomas Brackett, Stephanie Spellers, Christopher Ashley, Marie Harkey and Kirsten Wesselhoeft.

POSTED 07.03.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (2)