Virtual Methodist

A few days ago in the wake of the resignation of the dishonourable MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, I reposted a piece from a few years ago when he was at his barnstorming worst, using his expensive education and carefully curated speaking style to create division. How we use words is important, because ultimately they can do much more damage that "sticks and stones." However, it is also important that we focus on the positive rather than the negative, drawing on those who inspire rather than those who infuriate. My mind was drawn to one such over the past few days because the Irish Council of Churches rep at our annual conference, Dr. Joan Back, passed me a copy of this month's "New City" magazine, which is a publication of the Focolare movement to which she belongs. She wanted me to have it because they had printed the poem/prayer below, which I originally published in this blog in 2017 but which was later included in "Doodlings and Doggerel...

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee,  to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you….  Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,  and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants for ever; his kingdom will never end.’ Luke 1: 26-28, 30-33 For one group this stop was the last on this year's Methodist Conference event, "We Make the Way by Walking" where we led conference members around Belfast city centre.... for others it waswhere they started. That in itself might be a metaphor for the different spiritual journies of Christians in this city...

It's been one of those weeks... and when set against the background of a world that seems determined to self-destruct by any one of numerous means, whilst we see human misery played out on our news-feeds and TVs continually, various engagements with others that have rattled me in recent days probably shouldn't upset me as much as they have done... but I suppose I just don't have the personal resilience at present to suck it up, and I have never been wise enough to just keep my mouth shut and my head down with the result that I can at times make a bad situation worse...  But this piece, shaped by the well-known Great Litany from the Book of Common Prayer which alludes to works of evil and the tempting of the devil (appropriate enough for Lent), and all manner of sexual misconduct (it always comes down to sex doesn't it?!), started to form as a genuine prayer as I processed a few of those engagements in recent days. I may point the finger at others, but I am all too awar...

Having posted a prayer by St. Teresa of Avila earlier in the week, below is one drawn from another inspiring medieval woman, the German Benedictine, Hildegard of Bingen ( 1098 – 1179), a veritable renaissance woman, long before the Renaissance. She was an abbess, poet, composer (she even had a hit album recently!), theologian, philosopher and mystic, is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany, writing influential botanical and medicinal texts, was the author of what is possibly the earliest German liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play, and inventor of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota. She might easily be seen as a patron saint of the modern environmental movement with her strong sense of the wholeness of creation. Given her range of interests she has always intrigued me, especially given that she had a strong sense of how they were all integrated: “Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and ...

Once a month I meet with a group of friends and colleagues for a midweek lunch and discussion of where things are in the world, particularly this peculiar corner of it. At the close of it we use the mid-day office of the Northumbrian Community. We don't meet over the summer, but on Sunday past 2 friends on either side of the Atlantic posted a prayer that is part of that liturgy, a prayer by Teresa of Avila. Personally, it could not be more timely, for reasons that those who know me well will come to know in due course, but in the midst of an, at times, frightening world, it is appropriate for all of us: 'Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing afright you, All things are passing: God never changes.' St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Just back from a really stimulating day with other chaplains at the Clinical Pastoral Education Retreat to Dromantine. It fell to our group to lead worship at the beginning and for it I wrote the following responsive prayer based on the first part of Isaiah 61 (I came home to discover that Stocki had referred to the latter part of the same chapter in his Surmise today promoting the upcoming Four Corners Festival - it is a truly inspiring chapter of scripture... perhaps that is why Jesus chose to read it to his home Synagogue in Nazareth.) I may have written it for a group of chaplains, but, if the Pope is correct in defining the contemporary church as a "field hospital" for those wounded in the world (a concept which we explored today) then it is an appropriate prayer for all those who are part of the church... Sovereign  L ord  pour your Spirit upon us, Anoint us to bring good news to the poor and the powerless Wherever we may encounter them on our journeys: Sen...

The practice of advent watchfulness is, in many ways an exercise of prolonged prayer... Training ourselves to be awake to the presence of God in the world around us.  Earlier in the year I offered some reflections based on Eugene Peterson's book "The Contemplative Pastor". Well, in that book he points out the difference between the more commonplace tradition of apophatic prayer and kataphatic prayer.  You may not realise it but most of us, particularly in the Protestant traditions, were taught apophatic prayer from childhood, when we were told "Fold your hands, bow your head, shut your eyes, and we'll talk to God." Apophatic prayer attempts to eliminate all earthly distractions that may distract us from communion with our Creator. By contrast kataphatic prayer encourages us to "reach out our hands, lift up our heads, open our eyes and listen to God, using triggers in creation to point us to the Creator - icons, symbols, scripture, ritual, incense...

In the light of the last post in the 10 Day You Challenge looking at 8 Fears, I thought I would briefly return to the theme of worry, anxiety and fear, which I've looked at a couple of times recently... perhaps for exactly the same reason that God and Jesus repeatedly told people not to fear... because it is, in it's many forms, such a major feature of human life. Back at the turn of the millennium Rohan Candappa wrote "The Little Book of Stress" as a pocket sized antidote for all the other self-help tomes, especially the nauseating "Little Book of Calm" that was so rightly pilloried on Black Books. It is filled with useful little hints and tips aimed at maxing out your stress levels, with many of them centring on worry... including useful suggestions like: Write down your worries. Read the list before you go to bed. Worry or anxiety can be paralysing... And is at times totally irrational. The book "In the Pink" that I reviewed a while back ...

This was prompted by us hosting an open meeting of silent worship led by the South Belfast Society of Friends last Wednesday night, and I had hoped to post it yesteday, since it was national poetry day... But I was prevented by a hectic timetable and internet problems... But better late than never... Meeting for worship and prayer with Friends Silently sitting in a prayer room, A cell or silo, cut through with a single window Through which, at the right angle One can see the world go by One can see the world go buy Silence suffused by the constant rumble of traffic Pierced by a wailing alarm crying wolf And punctuated by prompted words Through which, in the right light One can see a wider world One can see a wiser world Worship is not a matter of words and music And prayer is not retreat from the world But an active interweaving of heaven and earth Through which, in the right time One can see another world One can see in another world ...

And another thing... There was a distinct dearth of posts on this site last week... First because I had a backlog of boxes to empty following our house-move and I had a lot to wrap up before knocking off for a bit of a break... But just because I wasn't posting stuff, doesn't mean there wasn't a lot going on in the rice pudding that passes for my brain... So now that I am "off" and before I head away for a few days I thought I would catch up with a few of the issues that had been dominating the media over the past 10 days or so... With the notable exception of the Royal baby... My approach to that is best summed up in Andrea Mann's piece in the Huffington Post "BREAKING NEWS: Woman Gives Birth To Baby" . I began yesterday by offering some of my thoughts prompted by  Justin Welby's approach to the whole Wonga-world episode . But one of the things I didn't say was that what impressed me most about his approach was that it wasn't just ab...

Another wee excerpt from Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor": "People would rather talk to the pastor than to God and so it happens that without anyone actually intending it, prayer is pushed to the sidelines.  And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we this. It is flattering to be put in the place of God. It feels wonderful to be treated in this godlike way. And it is work that we are generally quite good at." There is so much packed into a few lines here... but it essentially comes down to how we as pastors model things for those who have been entrusted to our care. Do we model  The Primacy of Prayer, or The Minister as Mini-Messi...

Partly as a personal response to some of the issues raised in my (surprisingly popular) post last week prompted by some of the points of annoyance I encounter in my calling as a pastor/preacher, I thought I would return to Eugene Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" as part of my daily devotions for a wee while... And a few lines in I found a whole collection of thoughts piling up which required more mature reflection... so in the absence of any ability on my part to do such a thing, I thought I'd blog on a few of them... beginning, as we should with the discipline of prayer... Peterson says: "Prayer is a subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime..." In other words, prayer is not just an act of personal piety or a corporate ritual, but is a profoundly revolutionary political activity. To continue my thoughts in yesterday's post , not only is prayer a pledge of allegiance to a ki...

Yesterday morning I and about a thousand or so other people were summoned to prayer, not by bells (or by a muezzin in a minaret) but by guys in fluorescent waistcoats blowing whistles... I was taking part in the 5 minute prayer vigil around Belfast City Hall, and as I said yesterday on facebook I was going to write a longer piece on it, but Stocki said it much better than I would in his Surmise . He even used a line I was gearing up to, the Iona Community's John Bell's oft repeated assertion that God's favourite colour is tartan... I suppose that line has stuck with me because I have a Scottish wife... But it certainly applied to yesterday, as I saw people from all sorts of denominational affiliations, social classes, theological bents and political affectations linking arms around city hall and looking out towards the 4 corners of this divided city as they prayed silently (for the most part) for it... But that is, in many ways, only the beginning... When we pray, th...

This day last year John Stott died. For those who don't know who he was, for over half a century he was the figurehead of mainstream evangelicalism within the UK, personifying a gracious, thoughtful conservatism that made it difficult for even those who disagreed with him to become disagreeable... During the year subsequent year I came across what was described as John Stott's Daily Prayer . I offer it to you today for your prayerful reflection: Heavenly Father, I pray that I may live this day in your presence and please you more and more. Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself and cause your fruit to ripen in my life: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control Holy, blessed and glorious trinity, three persons in one God, have mercy upon me. Almighty God, Creator and sustainer of the universe, I worship you. ...

Did you miss me? Looking at the blog stats over the past few weeks, the answer to that is clearly no, but never mind... For those interested, I've been a little busy recently with a jaunt to Scotland for a family celebration, and another to Enniskillen for the Methodist Church in Ireland conference, with a couple of funerals thrown in for good measure. So I'm punctured now, and am likely to be absent from the blogsphere for a few more days as I have a bit of catch-up to do out in the real world... But first a brief comment on the conference... Some people expressed surprise that I, and others were so positive about the past few days... I don't tend to look forward to conference... It used to be that it was a time that afforded us the chance to catch up with colleagues that we haven't seen for a year and long coffee breaks allowed important discussions to take place behind the scenes. In recent years a shortened agenda has reduced the space for those encounters, whil...

Last year when I was just coming out of a period of prolonged depression, and pronounced and unexpected anxiety (which is something I had never experienced before) I was involved with a discussion where someone suggested I read a book entitled “Respectable Sins” by Jerry Bridges, which describes many of the emotions that we have been discussing in the light of the Psalms as “sins” including anxiety. Now before my illness I might have done the same, and had preached, slightly glibly, on worry, more than once. But in the light of my illness I saw anxiety or worry not as a sin, but as an effect of being a limited mortal being living in a fallen world… Maybe I was making excuses for myself, but actually I don't think so and have come to believe that to describe those who cope with chronic anxiety as “respectable sinners” is, for me, pastorally and morally repugnant… God repeatedly tells his people not to fear, not because they are miserable sinners in this area, but because anxiety...

This morning's Thought for the Day offering... Well today the back pages of the newspapers have been filled with stories of my beloved Liverpool's all-too-late thrashing of a weakened Chelsea side . As  Jimmy Greaves used to say of to erstwhile Liverpool player Ian St. John, “It’s a funny old game, Saint…”  And throughout this season it has been just that… Though funny in the sense of strange, rather than “ha-ha”. It has been on the front page of the newspapers as much as on the back… Allegations of racist language being used by high profile premiership players caused huge repercussions, not only to  Liverpool, where it may have contributed to their lacklustre season, but also to the English national team, necessitating the  appointment of a new England manager,  leading in turn to controversy about misjudged jokes in the press about the speech impediment of appointee Roy Hodgson … We also had the seeming suicide of Welsh national manager Gary Speed , ...

I've written a couple of pieces on chaplaincy recently ( here and here ) and so it was interesting to have this piece on hospice chaplaincy brought to my attention by a former intern. Meanwhile, reflections on Fabrice Muamba and his ongoing recovery have continued in various corners of the interweb, but the most interesting for me was Kevin Hargaden's comments on the ill-conceived  challenge of a group of cross-party MPs to ASA ban on advertising faith-healing . Their particular crusade (and I use that word advisedly) is part of the developing war between conservative Christians and militant secularists... Hardly a day goes by without coming across a link concerning the "persecution" of Christians in secularist Britain, usually via the Daily Mail or the Christian Institute/Voice and featuring some quote or other by George Carey, or, on the other hand, some campaign by Dicky Dawkins and his merry band of fundamentalist atheists. Indeed I could include many of...

At the moment the ConDem Coalition are pushing for a change in the legal definition of marriage in the UK to include same-sex partnerships, which has produced a number of high profile objections by the church and has led a number of individuals and organisations, both from a faith perspective and not, to form a Coalition for Marriage arguing for the more traditional definition... Those coming from a Christian perspective on this tend to talk a lot about a "Biblical model of marriage" but as this contribution from John Byron's "Biblical World" reminds us, a Biblical perspective on marriage is a lot more complex than we might like to admit. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury has not been as vocal on this issue as his counterpart in York, but any suspicions that he might go quietly into his recently announced, and widely lamented, retirement  were roundly refuted with a very bullish statement on the wrong-headedness of the government and secularists ...

My post today is not in any way unique... Similar comments are all over the front, back and editorial pages of most UK newspapers, it has been the subject of at least 3 "Pause for Thought"-type meditations on radio that I have heard, including one by my Methodist colleague George Loane on Radio Ulster ( 24 and 84 minutes in to todays Good Morning Ulster ), and will doubtless feature on many blogs over the next few days... Saturday was a day I had been looking forward to for a while... It was St. Patrick's Day and the culmination of the 6 Nations Rugby when Ireland were going to put England in their place... I had to juggle a lot of work to carve out time to watch the matches... And frankly, at the end of it all I wondered why I had bothered. Scotland were abject in the wooden spoon clash with Italy (putting my Scottish wife in a really good mood for the day ahead). The Wales/France showdown was dull as dishwater... with Wales claiming the championship and grand slam...