Category Archives: spirituality

Dickens angels

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I have now started to think more about the ideas we have been having for the Dickens Festival. We see between 10000-15000 through the cathedral doors over this weekend. My task is to work with others to develop ‘stations’ or some way that people can encounter God as they pass through the building.

This can be a tricky task at normal times, but during ‘Dickens’, being near to Christmas, people always seem to be in such a rush unless something really grabs them. Last year we ran with the theme of ‘pause for thought’ and this year we are using the theme of angels. In my conversations with people I have noticed angels cropping up in conversation quite a bit. There seems to be, at least a local, interest and so it makes sense to me to take this as a theme and see what happens.

We are going to take a bit of a gamble this year and run with a similar set up to how we worked at the Sweeps Festival with a mind body spirit theme overarching what we do. We will be offering prayer for healing, a space for meditation, prayer beads and the ever popular and valuable foot and hand massage and you will again be able to experience a Jesus Deck reading. Our ‘giveaway’ will invite people to spend a week with the angels.

I’m looking forward to the weekend and hearing peoples stories – it’s one of the privileges of my role!

The team is looking good, but if you want to get involved please let me know)

peer spiritual direction

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I tried out something new last week with a good friend, Hugh, from Greenwich YFC. Over the years we have both had various spiritual directors, some which have worked well and some which have not. This is not a criticism on anyone as spiritual direction is a particularly personal thing and I think entails having some understanding of the person being directed’s background and work they are trying to do.

Before the summer Hugh came up with the idea of trying out ‘peer spiritual direction’ where we meet and discuss where we are and other questions that we might look at with a spiritual director on a one to one basis. Last week we met for a couple of hours over coffee and it seemed to be a valuable experience.

The four questions we looked at and are committing to look at each time:
What is God doing with you at the moment?
How is your prayer life?
How are your relationships?
What character in the Bible do you most resonate with at the moment and why?

As I said it was a worthwhile time and it was particularly good to not to have to talk about my story again and instead was able to dive straight into the questions. I think we were able to spiritually support each other well and I look forward to our next get together.

more MBS reflections

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I worked with Vanessa on one day at the MBS fair the other week and liked her reflections on the stuff we get involved in while there each year. Vanessa sums up excellently what it is all about – thanks!

mbs next week!

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Next week I am again going to be helping out on the Dekhomai stand at the London MBS fair.

Being part of this is one of the highlights of my year and I’m really looking forward to being part of Dekhomai again this year on Thursday and Sunday.

If you visit the Dekhomai website you can see the new postcards, one on the Jesus Prayer and the other on silence, designed for this year – I think they are pretty impressive.

Giving space

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The weekend is well and truly over but I am still ‘on a buzz’ over what happened over the weekend. The rest of my Sweeps photos are here if you are interested.

We engaged meaningfully with loads of people. People were surprised to see us serving in this way in the cathedral. They were visibly touched by the welcome and the love shown from the team. It’s a shame that we cannot keep this kind of different space alongside the other areas, such as the chapels, for people to dwell with God.

The team had loads of amazing conversations with people searching in a variety of ways for a variety of things. People have been healed both physically and emotionally. People have experienced the Spirit using them to bless a fellow human being.

For me, it was the first time that I had really engaged with the Jesus Deck with people. At one time on Monday I think I did something like 6 back to back readings. As I looked at the cards with some people more people became interested and so a little queue grew. I have always been nervous about looking at these cards with people but the links people were seeing with their lives were quite amazing. It was a privilege to stand with people as they started to clearly see the Spirit of God communicating with them in their present situation. The situation is hard to explain, but as every person thanked me for my time my natual response was ‘no … thank you because it has been an honour.’ And it was – people have been letting us into a small part of their lives, trusting us, sometimes, with parts of their lives that they vacuum packed and compartmentalised in their memory.

I felt a sense of sadness as we packed down on Monday as the festival drew to a close. Rebecca asked me what I had learned …. i had to think a while and I guess I have been reflecting on that question all day. I guess I have re-learned some stuff – particularly  that God is drawing people and I don’t really have to find people but just be available. I had a sense of sadness that we had to work inside on Sunday, but it soon became clear that working inside the cathedral was the better place to be. Maybe I had mis-heard God for the Saturday, or maybe not, but we engaged with far more people on Sunday and Monday inside the cathedral than we did on the Saturday outside the cathedral.

I have also re-learned that if we give God space, God will work. Too often we try to force the hand of God through our activities or events. Here we gave God space and people have been powerfully effected.

I guess I have learned most of all this weekend that it is this engaging with people through spirituality, engaging with people through serving them, and engaging with people who have a genuine quest for faith are the things that really energise me and make me think ‘this is what I am here for – to listen, to serve, to love.’ I’m missing Sweeps already – I hope we do this again next year.

mind body spirit and sweeps

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The Sweeps Festival starts tomorrow in Rochester and I’ll be spending most of my weekend involved there (apart from a short break to watch Gillingham beat Southampton!) The Sweeps program can be downloaded here. If you look on page 6 of the guide it outlines what we are doing – although somehow ‘Mind Body and Spirit’ has come out in the program as ‘Sound Body and Mind’.

the program outlines that Sound, Body and Mind is a  a spiritual experience with free hand and foot massages, the chance to make prayer beads, experience the Jesus deck of cards and have the opportunity to receive a healing prayer.

We will be working from 2 gazebos placed in St Mary’s Meadow (which is the bit of grass on the High Street side of the cathedral). If the weather is really really bad as forecast for Sunday then we will be found inside the cathedral. If you are in the area why not pop along.

This year we are seeking to engage with and serve people in the same way that I do when involved with the Dekhomai team at MBS events. The stall for the next 3 days is making use of the Dekhomai name. We shall also be using the Dekhomai Prayer beads postcard along with a St. Florian prayer postcard I have designed specifically for Sweeps. St Florian is the Patron Saint ofr sweeps and firefighters. On the reverse of the postcard is the traditional firefighter prayer alongside a prayer to St Florian for those who feel they cannot or are uncomfortable praying direct to God or Jesus. This prayer takes the tradition of praying to saints and asking them to ask God on our behalf.

Part of me is challenged by what Ihave designedas personally I have never prayed to a saint as I believe everyone can approach God through prayer. I have come across many people, however, who ask me to pray for them because they feel unable to pray for themselves. I hope these postacrds will help people in their own homes or workplaces to be able to approach their Creator God through Saint Florian.

In addition to the above we will be offering the making of prayer beads, prayer and anointing for healing, foot and hand massage, prayer blessings,  Jesus Deck applications, and Ignation meditation opportunities. During or after these activities we will offer to pray with people.

Dekhomai, the welcoming place, is all about getting alongside people, being with people and allowing them time to make themselves aware of the spiritual presence of God around them.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what God does when we give the room for God to do what God can do. Please pray for the team over the 3 days of the festival.

a personal page

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It’s been a fairly quiet and reflective start to the week.
I met up with Sister Martha who is my new spiritual director. WE chatted a lot and she challenged me by asking me what is God saying to me, and how is God interacting with me through all that is happening. That was a really tough but cool question – I can answer how I see God moving in the places that I hang out, I can also answer how I think God is working in the lives of others; but when asked to personalise it for myself I was stumped for a while.

I fudged an answer that sounded something like, well I think God is challenging me about where I see him and teaching me personally that I should be expecting to see him in the unexpected places. I knew I was waffling and so did Martha, which I guess is the mark of a good spiritual director.

We explored this a little more and she has set me a task over the next 5 weeks or so to develop what she called a personal page where I write ‘stuff’ that comes to be about my relationship with God, or what I am thinking about God – a word, phrase or, I guess, picture even that says something about how I am engaging with God in my life as a person.

As Martha was outlining this quite a lot withing me was shouting ‘no! I don’t really want to think about this which I shared and brought a smile to both of us. I think God is moving me into another place which will be uncomfortable for me as I try to come to grips more with what is going on personally, as well as what is happening in the community and what is happening in the pub.

This all seems to tie in incredibly well with what I have been taking in from the rule of St. Benedict which understands the need to be able to understand and accept yourself before you can start to understand and accept others.

Meeting Martha today was a good bit of timing as tomorrow I join with other curates from our diocese along with those from Canterbury Diocese for 3 days at Aylesford Priory. There will be space here to mull over what Martha has said and I am looking forward to that opportunity. In the meantime – the blog will go quiet!

hit by the porter!

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Its been another study day which has worked quite well. I achieved the aim of finishing reading, again, the rule of life of St Benedict. The rule is challenging, but I like the way the rule seems to be all encompassing. It relates to everything from meal times, what to wear and so on because St Benedict saw no distinction between secular and spiritual. This rule of life works from the premise that everything is important to God and so everything needs to be taken account of.

Some things hit me today which I had not noticed before, probably because I zipped through the final few rules last time. Many people are aware that hospitality is a particular hallmark of Benedictine spirituality. Rule 66 is all about the porter.

This rule starts like this: ‘At the door of the monastery place a sensible old man who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply, and whose age keeps him from roaming about.’ There seems to be a bit of Benedictine humour there with images this portrays.

The porters role is to be the first response to visitors. He is the connection between the community and the outside world as the rest of the community would not leave the monsatery often if at all. I think Esther de Waal sums this up well in her commentary on the rule: ‘the porter stands on the edge, based in the enclosure and yet greeting the world outside. So in him we are watching the holding together of desert and marketplace, cloister and world.

I like and very much relate to the idea of standing on the edge and it reminds me of the doorkeeper poem I linked to here 5 years ago.

In particular I have struck and challenged in my thinking over the actual greeting itself from the porter to whoever may knock on the door. His first response is to thank God for bringing a visitor. Then sometime in the encounter the porter is to ask for the blessing of the visitor. When re-reading this rule it hit me that Benedict is saying that hospitality, welcome, care needs to be 2 way. It’s something about all being able to give and receive.

It does not take a big imagination to realise that a lot of the visitors to the monastery would be those who needed help with food, clothing or so on. Many would have been excluded from society, thought of as worthless. The porter, however, sees the face of Jesus and asks the visitor for a blessing. This would immediately show the visiting person that they had a role and had value.

I have been wondering how I might take on this 2 sided view in my ministry and in encounters with people. IN particular I have been thinking about those that ask me to pray for them. I have shared that I am uncomfortable as this gives an impression that my prayers are is some way better, which is a mad idea. I wonder, however, if when I have such encounters that I should end them by making a request of them by asking them to remember me in their prayers as I need prayer as much as them?

I’m still pondering this – would such a response show value and respect, or would it confuse and alienate. It’s a pretty fine line I think?

the sacred made real

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The Sacred Made Real exhibition coming later in October to the national Gallery looks well worth a visit.

The blurb from the site says:

This exhibition will bring together paintings and painted wooden sculptures by the great Spanish realists of the 17th century. ‘The Sacred Made Real’ will provide a reappraisal of the crucial role of these hyper-realist sculptures in the development of Spanish art.

Providing a unique experience, sculpture and painting will be displayed side-by-side. This will be the first major exhibition to explore this relationship.

Most Spanish sculptures from this time were dedicated to key Christian themes. ‘The Sacred Made Real’ will explore how painters and sculptors combined their skills to create arrestingly real depictions of the saints, the Immaculate Conception and the Passion of Christ.

I must try to get along to see this – anyone fancy going?

does Benedict give us anything for today?

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I don’t particularly enjoy Wednesday’s – well that’s not strictly true. It’s a mixed day. I have to take it as a study day, as per the recommendations, and I love studying and reading – it’s just I need to be in the mood to do so and at the moment it just seems there is a lot of stuff flying around in my head regarding the people in w/spoons, the people who gather at our house each month, missional installations in the cathedral during The Sweeps and Dickens in Rochester – all things that easily distract me from what I should be studying.

I have been looking at Benedictine Spirituality because that is the heritage we have at the cathedral. I’ve been particularly investigating it with an eye to wondering whether there is anything we can learn from Benedictine Spirituality in the way that we engage with tourists and visitors in the cathedral, particularly at those festival times I mentioned above – when we can have thousands of people walking through each day. This is essentially the question I am asking in my next essay for ongoing training.

Benedictine Spirituality is well known as having a hallmark of hospitality which I think is key and will come on to in a moment. The Benedictine rule, however, opens with the words ‘listen carefully’ and the rule seems to keep coming back to this. Listen carefully to God, listen carefully to each other and listen carefully to yourself. I think maybe the last one is one we ignore a fair bit; but Benedict seems to be quite hot on presenting the rule (of which there are 73 chapters looking at all aspects of life due to the understanding that everything is important to God) and then giving some flexibility clause with words like ‘as best you are able’, in which he seems to rely on Godly integrity and listening to our bodies to help us decide whether we can perform a particular task. The correct number of hours of sleep is also a priority in the rule in the early chapters.

So, a logical conclusion to draw from this is that whatever we try to do to engage with people during our festivals the two words we need to keep at the front of our minds is to listen carefully with a flexible approach that recognises that all are different and have a unique set of needs at any one particular time which may range from a glass of water to needing someone to pray with.

The hospitality thing is major in chapter 53. Benedict instructs ‘all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ’. That’s a pretty tall order and a very serious one. Benedict then goes on to describe how people should be welcomed: announced, prayed with, sat with, every kindness shown, the abbot is to wash their hands and feet, given a meal which is eaten with the abbot, after which they have a room with adequate bedding. I’m pretty convinced that Benedict here is reminding of the time Jesus washed the disciples feet and saying …. if you want to learn how to welcome people as Christ then you need to learn how to serve people as Christ.

How, as a cathedral that take this Benedictine rule of hospitality seriously, can we exercise that in a relevant and authentic way when thousands pass through the doors at street festival times? Is it enough to engage in conversation? should we offer to wash peoples feet? how do we feed thousands of people? Are all our visitors guests in the way Benedict thinks of them? Are we presuming all want to be welcomed as Christ; some come to find space with God, while others come to get out of the cold/heat/rain, or to see the architecture, or to learn of the history. Are all these people guests? Hospitality is not hospitality if it is forced upon those that do not want it – can we have hospitality on offer for people to take if they wish?

Thinking aloud on here seems to be helping the process. If you can help me answer any of this then I’ll have an essay nearly sorted (and you will of course be credited!)