Iona community initiation rites

The Celtic journey to Iona community membership – the Camus experience

(a recently hallowed brother spills the beans....)

In the liminal space between associate and full membership of the Iona community lies the arduous and testing new members programme. The most important part of this process is designed to thoroughly explore potential new members Celtic credentials. It takes place at Camus on the bleak and barren Hebridean west coast of Scotland following the ancient traditions of Saint Columba.

The brethren and wimmen who believe themselves destined for membership rendezvous for a week of trials at this remote location on the island of Mull. There they live close to the soil in the spirit of the ancient monks. No lights do they have for their bedchambers nor heating, nor even hot water. The food they eat is grown in a nearby vegetable patch and the freshly picked salads are rich with the proteins of wee crawling beasties from the fertile earth. No other meat will pass their lips for the duration of their stay and no hot water will bathe the stinking sweat off their steaming bodies after long days of toil digging at the peat bog, track building and garden drain excavating. 

Hours will have been spent in a prone posture in the chapel of the nets: nets in which according to ancient tradition the fish of the sea were once caught. Now in this place of detritus from a working past they reflect on their own tasks in the world today on the hard unyielding floor. The suffering and subsequent aches being counted as righteousness and virtue.

As well as living close to the soil and meditating on the nets they also engage in the ancient Celtic craft of boat-building. Making use of technology not available to the original coracle builders they create vessels which they have to sail through the streaming brine as if on a missionary journey across the ocean with the urgency of bringing a saving message to the wild folks on the other side. Part of this raft building and voyage adventure is very likely also to involve an experience of total immersion, dipping into the near freezing waters of the north Atlantic. This experience re-enacts the early Celtic baptism experience to be interpreted as rebirth from the womb of the earth.

The Colombian spirit of courage and faith is encouraged as new members can gain extra righteousness through testing their bodies to the utmost. They do this by throwing themselves off a nearby high clifftop, trusting their lives to a single rope. Immense courage is required for such abseiling especially when taunted by the hoards of fellow novices below. It is one of the ultimate tests of faith.
Colomba's spirit of cheerfulness is not ignored as, en vino veritas, there are opportunities for giggling and chortling and even baiting one another in friendly west of Scotland style banter. Music and jocularity abound for the night of the Camus challenge. This spirit of cheerfulness must be be reigned in and kept under strict control before the initiates are allowed to return from this wild raucous place back into the real world of dour Presbyterianism that dominates the rest of Scotland.

The new members initiation comes later with the imposing ceremony of the deathly hallows which is a welcome and blessed release after the arduous trials of the Camus experience.

W B Yeats poem

From the epic poem Nineteen hundred and nineteen 

by W B Yeats

V

Come let us mock at the great 
That had such burdens on the mind 
And toiled so hard and late 
To leave some monument behind, 
Nor thought of the levelling wind. 

Come let us mock at the wise; 
With all those calendars whereon 
They fixed old aching eyes, 
They never saw how seasons run, 
And now but gape at the sun. 

Come let us mock at the good 
That fancied goodness might be gay, 
Grown tired of their solitude, 
Upon some brand-new happy day: 
Wind shrieked and where are they? 

Mock mockers after that 
That would not lift a hand maybe 
To help good, wise or great 
To bar that foul storm out, for we 
Traffic in mockery. 

Not quite sure why I chose to copy that today but 

it hit me when looking through the book of Yeats' 

poems I keep to hand. 

Piano player with arthritic fingers

Yesterday I was a visiting preacher and led worship in a church which is not my usual one. The tunes for some of the hymns I had chosen were new to that congregation. There was concern from the person I spoke to when discussing the music as their pianist is over 90 years old and had arthritis in her fingers. I was therefore a little nervous when we started as to how it would go!
But I need not have worried. She was not perfect but she showed signs amidst the occasional shaky bits of the greatly talented musician that she had been. She didn't just thump out the tunes but added delicate twiddly bits to the notes and played with expression to match the emphasis of the verses.
It is good when people are able to use their talents at whatever age and are given an opportunity to be useful rather than being put away in storage because they have had too many birthdays. We saw this when we were at Oxford for the graduation ceremony last weekend. There the dean of degrees for the day from our daughter's college was an emeritus fellow well into her seventies.
I hope that when I get into my advanced years there will still be useful things that I can do. I also hope that my wife or some close friend will tell me when I get to be past it and it is time to put my feet up!

Image courtesy of healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Anne Fine: "Our precious Lulu" - a review

I first encountered Anne Fine as an author of children's novels that packed a reality punch. She wrote about step families, and people misbehaving and dysfunctional families not getting on. (All happy stuff!)

As I read her novel "Our precious Lulu " I realised that she is still writing about dysfunctional families where not very nice people do nasty things to their relatives. But I enjoyed the book, especially the black humour. 

The various characters are all obnoxious for different reasons. Lulu the most obnoxious because of her cutting remarks and sarcasm. She is a master of the innocent faux pas and cutting aside. She seems to do everything to hurt and annoy her step sister as much as possible but in the nicest possible way. Geraldine, the victim is passive and compliant but the years absorbing these attitudes have taken their toll. The book chronicles how she and her husband Robert get their revenge. It even has a surprisingly happy ending.

You can buy this book by clicking here

Prayer for the Queen's diamond jubilee by a child

Prayer from Millie

Dear God,
Hmmm…
as you know, the Queen, Elizabeth II
has been on the throne for 60 years now.
We’re contacting you
to tell you what we think when we celebrate.
We will be having a sort of a party-a festival to celebrate the on-the-throne anniversary.
It’s a long time. Almost a record. And that will be cool.
I wouldn’t fancy being Queen myself
So I say thank-you for the job she does
And hope she finds rest at the end of the day
when she comes home.
My grandpa once tried on her crown
when he was meant to be guarding it.
It was really heavy
So I ask that you give her strength
so she can carry what she needs to
thanks to you.
Amen


As found in the resource booklet published by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.

Pentecost new hymn

I was looking through the hymn book "Singing the Faith" thinking about a new take on Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit both to the church and to the lives of Christian people. Michaela Youngson has written a new hymn at 399 which I found inspiring. The first verse goes...

When deep despair casts out all light
and hope is wearing thin;
come Spirit, dance with gentle grace,
shine through the dullness we embrace
and make the colours sing;
and make the colours sing.

Words: © Michaela Youngson

It is set to the tune Repton, best known when used for the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of mankind" 

I would have liked to quote the whole hymn but I'm sure that to do so is forbidden by copyright law.

Treat others as you would like to be treated..

All human beings like being treated well. So often in our modern world people treat others with discourtesy, disrespect and downright rudeness. Being treated well gives you a real boost and makes you feel good.
Last week I made a long train trip and booked using a special internet offer code so I got a first class ticket at a bargain price. As a result the service I received was superb. 
I had never before experienced first class! In your seat you had complimentary drinks offered and complimentary food served all day. This is not the way to take a trip if you are on a diet! It makes you feel good to be pampered and treated well. The seats are wider than those in ordinary carriages and also recline. I have been on long train journeys which can be a nightmare where you spend the trip longing for the agony to be over.
The trade off we have to understand is that good service costs. If we feel virtuous about getting the best possible deal and paying the lowest possible price for everything then we cannot expect the overworked staff,  inevitably be on minimum wage, to offer the best customer service. Like all of life we get what we pay for. You cannot expect a stranger to pamper you for free!
I find it challenging to wonder if I always treat people I meet in the best way that I can? Especially when I am tired at the end of a long day I know that I am not as nice to others as I want them to be towards me. 

Explaining the symbolic

Last weekend we went to our daughter's graduation. It was held in Christopher Wren's Sheldonian theatre in Oxford and lasted for nearly two hours. The whole ceremony was in Latin. I only understood a few words and had to keep looking at the translation on the glossy brochure that we had been given.

All the participants were wearing gowns and mortarboards and had strange names like bedel, proctor, dean and pro-vice-chancellor. The proctors after having announced in Latin the names of the students graduating would immediately walk up and down the hall before calling the students to come forward in groups for the degrees to be conferred. (This walking up and down was symbolic and was supposed to allow the deans to stand and object if they didn't want any students to be awarded degrees!) The students also dressed up – the graduands came in wearing the gowns signifying their status. Daughter arrived in her short “commoner” gown (the lowest of the low) that she had to wear for exams and formal dinners during her time as a student. They then processed out and returned in the new gowns indicating the new status the degree had conferred on them. The students awarded an MA degree knelt in a row in front of the pro-vice chancellor and he tapped each of them in turn on the head with a bible while saying in Latin “in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.” Though these students had been at the cutting edge of astrophysics and other sciences or working on modern literature they were re-enacting a ceremony in a form that would have been recognisable more than 500 years ago! I was relieved when the vice chancellor said the word “disolvo” to signify the end!

The university staff were used to the ceremonial. They knew the Latin script and when to bow and when to doff their mortarboards. They may well have become used to the strangeness of it all. But I wonder what the three hundred parents, partners and friends of the students made of the whole thing? If you had not read the guide brochure you might have thought you had landed on another planet or on the set of Hogworts for the filming of Harry Potter!

I sometimes wonder what a person who had never been to church in their life would make of some of the things we take for granted. We use words and do things in a symbolic way because we find they mean something to us. We must not expect that everyone will understand why we do all the things we do in the way that we do them. How much time should we spend explaining? Should we aim for a casual worship service with no symbolic acts or ceremonial aspects? More questions to live with.

Old hymns

Many ancient hymns are still in regular use today. Some though have been rightly forgotten. The one I quote below by Isaac Watts, written in 1719, is a versification of psalm 41. I think the understanding of the word bowels must have changed in the last 300 years! It has for some reason been left out of most modern hymnals.


Blest is the man whose bowels move
And melt with pity to the poor;
Whose soul, by sympathizing love,
Feels what his fellow saints endure.

His heart contrives for their relief
More good than his own hands can do;
He, in the time of general grief,
Shall find the Lord has bowels, too.

His soul shall live secure on earth,
With secret blessings on his head,
When drought, and pestilence and dearth
Around him multiply their dead.

Or if he languish on his couch,
God will pronounce his sins forgiv’n;
Will save him with a healing touch,
Or take his willing soul to Heav’n.

Changed perspectives

In all my years of working as a minister in the Methodist church the word "congregationalism" was used in a pejorative way to describe a tendency latent in all congregations to see their own little church community as the centre of the world and stuff the rest. Thus in my mind I always associated the word congregationalist with the words bloody minded, selfish and individualist.


As I now am minister of a URC church which was previously a congregationalist church I am having to revise my opinions. My views were most forcefully challenged last week when I heard a talk by an academic from the British congregational federation who extolled the virtues of a Church being behoven to no-one; flexible and adaptive to changing circumstances in a changing world, able to respond quickly and effectively to the situations in its locality and become church as appropriate for this present time. Maybe I have not been looking in the right places but this sort of flexible, postmodern, dynamic church is not what I usually see when I look at congregational churches.


Where a church is large and financially self sufficient then I guess that the congregational model of ecclesiology works well. I am not sure that it works as well with the present state of many churches who have shrunk in terms of membership and who have only grown in terms of average age of the congregation. My long experience of working in a church that is set up to work collaboratively (connexionally) tells me that co-operation between different congregations of the same denomination is always fighting against the mentality of "pulling up the drawbridge to protect what we have left" . 

The Lord's Prayer - a New Zealand version...

Father and mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is heaven;

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed

by the peoples of the world!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth!

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In the times of temptation and test strengthen us.

From trial too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.

Amen

From a New Zealand prayer book

Inspired by Tagore

I read the following poem by RabindranathTagore and it seemed to cry out for a response so I wrote one.

Separated by a century

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? 
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.
(RabindranathTagore,  The Gardener, 1915)


A reader replies

Great bard of Bengal, now almost one hundred years since those lines,
I, your reader, descendant of the Raj that you despised, living in a world so different to your day,
read of your garden. My heart leaps! 
I fling wide my garden door. The flowers, bright birdsong and fragrances speak now as they spoke in living joy 
that still rises with the sap and sings of divinity in subtle colours, so pale. My spring morning:
that same elation from floral memories and golden clouds.


(John Butterfield, Stirling, Scotland, 2011)

Worship with our whole selves..

I recently read a quote from the eighteenth-century revivalist, Jonathan Edwards:

‘Some bodily worship is necessary to give liberty to our own devotion; yea though in secret, so more when with others . . . ‘Tis necessary that there should be something bodily and visible in the worship of a congregation; otherwise, there can be no communion at all’.

I wonder what he had in mind by bodily and visible.  Our corporate worship is usually done standing in rows and singing songs or reciting/singing a liturgy. As whole beings we just use our voices and move occasionally from standing to sitting. The taking of communion can be a time when you get up and walk forward to kneel and receive but where I now minister the elements are brought to people sitting in their pews.
Am I advocating dance? You wouldn't want that! Have you ever seen me dance! I don't want to hold my hands in the air to get the physical sensations that this induces as the blood drains from your arms! 
How can our whole bodily reality be expressed in a time of worship? Do we want to create symbolic actions that get us moving about and doing something? (Put a pebble in the bowl, hang a leaf on this branch with a written prayer on it, sick a flag on the map of the world - I have been there and done that and as one off events they can appropriate and moving. Maybe this is a start. But these things are novelties and not really suitable to become a regular liturgical practice. And how do we include this in our regular week by week practice in buildings with immobile, uncomfortable seats in fixed rows?

The future of the RC church

I read that an organisation which represents more than 850 Roman Catholic priests in Ireland met earlier this week to discuss the future direction of the Irish RC Church. 
Ireland is mostly a very Catholic country but when you look at the points of view expressed you see how it is becoming radical. Is this the beginning of a new reformation?

"The Vatican has recently criticised leading members of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) for expressing views which contradict Church teaching.  The ACP recently commissioned a survey of Irish Catholics which found that 90% would support the introduction of married priests. The survey also found that 77% of Irish Catholics want women to be ordained, while more than 60% disageed with Church teaching that gay relationships were immoral. At the time, Fr Brendan Hoban from the ACP said the results were proof that the perception of Irish Catholics as traditionalist, conservative and resistant to change was wrong." -- BBC

The serious shortage of priests means that Ireland's Roman catholic church cannot carry on as before. The parishes are importing African and Polish priests just to keep going and old priests don't retire - they carry on until they drop. Can Pope Joe Ratzinger (AKA Benidict) squash this demand for reform as he has with so many other calls for reform. (He has been successful in winding back most of the radical changes introduced at Vatican II). Is the Cathoilic church waiting with baited breath for him to be "promoted to glory" so that they can open the floodgates to the modern world.
We live in interesting times. 

Photo source - I took it myself of an old crucifix I found in a charity shop

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - a short review

We thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is beautifully shot bringing out the colours and vibrancy of the life of an Indian city. The story line follows the gentle but life changing experiences of a group of English pensioners who are outsourced for their retirement to India!
It was an optimistic, feel good film that preached the message that it is never too late to change and do something new, exciting and different. The heavyweight all star cast was superb. The humour was very English and the sentimental bits gave you a warm glow without being too slushy or gushing.
The characters were somewhat stereotypical and the plot predictable but that didn't matter. It was two hours of enjoyment that kept my attention throughout the entire film. It is not an artistic masterpiece nor a classic that film buffs will rave about but for pure entertainment value I would say it is the best film I have seen this year.
 

Best quote: "It will be all right in the end and if it is not alright then it is obviously not the end"

Popcorn fight

I was at the cinema last night. The film was called "Bel Ami" set in 1890's Paris based on the novel of the same name by Guy de Maupassant about an immoral social climber who achieves fame and fortune by seducing the wives of several important men. The film stuck quite well to the novel and was an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

It was a story that could only have been in France!

And the story that enfolded in the cinema could only have happened in Scotland.

From behind us, in one of the quiet parts of the movie came a woman's voice
"Why didn't you just stay at home and watch a DVD - you are annoying other people with all that noise"
This provoked an outburst by another woman
"Cinemas sell popcorn. I come here to enjoy myself and I like popcorn. Popcorn and films go together."
Full volume Glaswegian and there was lots more! (plus expletives)
Fortunately after five minutes of high decibel female screeching a sense of collective embarrassment brought silence to the auditorium.

This made me think how we have become privatised many parts of life and are not used to being in a large community to watch a film - entertainment usually takes place in the home when we can eat drink or do whatever else while we watch. The atmosphere of shared concentration, admiration, weeping or fear is part of the spell of cinema for me. It is a collective experience that is different to watching a film at home. 

I love cinema and I dislike popcorn - and I refuse to go to those cinema chains where you have to buy tickets from a popcorn counter!

Wheelchair

I read an article last night describing the practical problems faced by a person with an impairment who uses a wheelchair. 

Wheelchairs come in all shapes and sizes these days and we can include in the genre mobility scooters of all kinds. Wheelchair users can also drive cars that are wheelchair accessible though these are expensive and higher than ordinary cars.

There are thus many things that technology can do for a person of limited mobility BUT much of the environment in which they have to move is in the control of others. They can do little about it. So

• Access to all premises is better these days but for some buildings a wheelchair user will have to use a separate entrance round the back
• reaching from a seated position is difficult so items high on supermarket shelves are inaccessible. As are the contents of chest freezers in stores
• toilets for disabled persons may meet standards but are useless if they have to be accessed by a route that includes a step
• counters in banks are at a height for standing customers
• if a wheelchair user is driving a car they may be at a height that makes using the ticket machines in a car park impossible - and they can't just hop out!
• lifts should be good but old style lifts can have heavy sliding doors/gates that are difficult to open and close from a wheelchair
• Parking spaces wide enough for getting in a wheelchair are frequently used by non wheelchair users
• visiting a restaurant means doing research beforehand to see if it has disabled toilets and access to all parts
• There is often a lack of planning - a rail station with disabled facilities may not have disabled parking places!

 It was a good article in that it helped me see the world through another persons eyes and understand the frustrations that they often feel as they try to live the normal sort of life that I take for  granted.

To believe is human, to doubt divine

"To believe is human, to doubt divine" is the subtitle of Peter Rollins' new book called Insurrection. In this book Peter Rollins argues that the Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death.

I post two quotations as tasters of the book which I want to read...

"The claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God in so far as one loves. "


"In the crucifixion we lose the idea of God as the one who justifies our loving engagement with the world by approving of it, but in resurrection we continue to affirm God as we love the world regardless. This is the move that some of the Christain mystics spoke of, a move from the idolotry of doing good for some reason (to get to heaven, to please God, get approval from others), to the act of doing good for no external reward. The former can be described as works based, in that it involves some economic exchange. In the latter we lay down all desire for reward and in doing so experience how love is its own reward. In the very experience of being forsaken by God (crucifixion) we find God in the very affirmation of Life itself (resurrection).
In this new state, the world is affirmed in the deepest and most radical way, not because everything that happens in it is good (indeed, all too often the very opposite is true), but because, in love, we experience creation, in all its brokenness, as wonderful."

Civilisation

Quote of the day:

"We've bought into the idea that education is about training and 'success', defined monetarily rather than learning to think critically and to challenge.We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilisation is its compassion, not its speed nor its ability to consume, condemns itself to death."   Chris Hedges

Thinking ahead

Today many people are focused entirely on the present moment. This is not necessarily a good thing - look for example of the person who checks their smart phone every few minutes to make sure that they have not received a life changing email in the minutes since they last checked. The technology available makes us expect all that we want to be available immediately and the idea of waiting is treated with scorn. Many people when they want something want it right now and if it is not there then they don't want it at all.

But today I have been thinking ahead as I have ordered seeds for planting in the garden. These will be for vegetables that we will hopefully enjoy next autumn and winter. That is the timescale at which they grow and nothing can be done to speed up the process.

All I have are the photos in the on line seed catalogue and the memory of things eaten in the past. So I live in hope, knowing that I can do much to influence the outcome by tending and nurturing the young plants but there is very little I can do to change the speed at which I will get to pick the results of my labours.

Perhaps the world would live at a more reasonable pace and people would learn patience if we all had the opportunity for gardening!