VICAR'S LETTER
17
Sundon Road
Streatley
July, 2009
Dear
All
This
year’s START course focused on our spiritual journey.
It began by mapping out the route, but much of the time was given
over to exploring how, both as individuals and as a church, we can
overcome some of the obstacles that we come up against.
Three difficulties in particular loomed large. For some, prayer had become stale and boring.
For others, the problem wasn’t so much what to pray or how to
pray, but finding the time and space in which to pray at all.
For yet others, the problem was a sense of their own unworthiness
and inadequacy that intruded between them and God.
To
refresh prayer that had become stale and repetitive, two answers were
explored. Assuming the prayer
to be essentially the shopping-list model (God bless mummy, God bless
daddy etc) one way of giving this a new slant might be to use what the
Celts call the ‘caim’ prayer. John
Pritchard in his book How
to Pray: A Practical Handbook;
describes it thus:
The caim is a form of prayer which encircles
a person, a home, church or anything else within the protective presence
of God. It can be a very satisfying way of praying for people and
situations because it has a physical feel to it. “Circle, Lord, your servant Steve with your security and
confidence as he faces this interview.”
“Circle, Lord, this home with your love and fill it with your
peace in a troubled time.” You
might even make a circling action with your fingers as you pray, as the
Celts did, to emphasise it and make it real.
Another
approach suggested was to break out of the usually rather narrow circle
encompassed by the list by using something like the Prayer Book that we
put out in Lent. This can
both enlarge the area of concern and introduce a greater diversity of
subjects. There was a general
assent that this little book had been found helpful and that it might be
good if it could be introduced in some slightly more permanent form.
The
problem of finding time and space to pray was raised.
How do you create or establish a sacred space in which to pray?
It’s alright for the Vicar.
He can go to church. But
what about everyone else? And
how do you establish a sacred time (a time that is sacred) when you have
the quiet to be still. It’s
alright if you live on your own or if this is something you can do jointly
with your partner, but it is altogether more of a problem in a busy
domestic setting. It can also
be more difficult where a faith is not shared between partners, or where,
though sharing a common faith, one partner is a Martha, very much a doer,
and the other a Mary, someone for whom prayer and contemplation and the
time and space to pursue these are of vital importance.
The creation of a sacred space can be fairly straightforward.
It doesn’t need the elaborateness of a domestic chapel or shrine.
A lit candle can, on its own, create such a space and serve as a
focus, pulling together thoughts when, as is inevitable, they begin to
wander. Finding the
space/time to pray, though plainly vital, is not something an outsider can
legislate for. A lot depends
on the individual situation (is there a spare room, is there a natural gap
in the daily schedule?) and on the success with which such a provision can
be negotiated with the other residents.
Some
sense of inadequacy or unworthiness in our dealings with God is, of
course, entirely proper. Remember
the publican and the Pharisee. If,
however, that sense becomes so intense that it hampers all relationship
with God, it becomes a real problem.
It is, it must be acknowledged, a problem that is in part of the
church’s making. The
medieval church was not backward in pointing out human sinfulness, but it
did at least set in place some mechanisms to prevent that burden becoming
insupportable. There was
individual confession and absolution.
There was the system of talking to God through the Virgin Mary and
the Saints. There was, for
all but the deadliest of sinners, the safety net of Purgatory stretched
above the pit of hell. The
Reformation, by contrast, intensified men’s sense of sin, hell-fire
preaching, but at the same time it removed the systems that mitigated the
sense of worthlessness. The
modern church is to some extent the child of that process, and all the
members heirs to that inheritance. What
it can perhaps now do to help is to set alongside, and even ahead of, its
recognition of human sinfulness, the affirmation that there is something
of God in us all. We are his
children and we have it on the authority of his Son that we can talk to
him as we would to our own father.
A course looking at our Spiritual Journey is not an easy one to undertake. If it is to get anywhere it needs those taking part to be open and frank about the difficulties they are facing. This year’s group couldn’t have been more helpful. One just hopes that they got something in return.
All best wishes,
Roger