Less Eeyore

You may have gathered I have, for the moment at least, decided to maintain both my blogs. I'm glad there's some consistency between them but I think they're different. Anyhow, I've decided to try to be brief!

The final quote which I can remember from New Wine came, I think, from Simon Ponsonby, the Oxford theologian and preacher, and it went something like,
"We have too much Eeyore and not enough 'in awe' in our worship."
Eeyore, you'll remember from A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh was constitutionally glum in diametric contrast to the irrepressibly bouncy Tigger.

Simon clearly wasn't recommending we adopt Tiggerish immaturity in our worship, that we should bounce around with never a care in the world. If the galaxies in the night sky elicit a reaction of awe in us, how much more should the God who brought them into being! He is a mystery beyond our comprehending. AWE is the right response. BUT that doesn't mean miserable.

It doesn't mean singing everything in a minor key; it doesn't mean singing only hymns; it doesn't even means keeping your hands down by your side and standing to attention. Yes, our God is an awesome God, BUT He loves us. In fact He loves the whole cosmos - and He loves you. As a child might say -  "Wow!" That's awe, and it should make us celebrate wildly. The Jubilee crowds in the Mall and the Olympic Stadium on the Saturdays didn't have as much to cheer about! God is love!

However, it's not just about Sunday services that Simon was talking. As they say at Bethel in California, "Worship is a lifestyle." We are loved and we have hope. We should be filled with the Spirit of worship every day. That should keep us from being like Eeyore!

I'm just back from praying outside a psychic fair. People drifted in looking depressed and walked out again looking equally sad. They clearly had not found peace or joy. There's better on offer, folks! "I have come to bring you life in all its fulness" (Jesus).

God made him fast

Here's a fascinating account of Usain Bolt, the flawed but unashamed Christian: Diary of a WIP: The BBC and Christianity. You might not have been aware of it. I certainly wasn't.

No hands but ours?

"Transformation is nearer than temptation."

This was again a watchword of Alan Scott's. I took it as a reminder that God is constantly proactive and creative, whereas the devil is just opportunistic. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by a sense of failure or of facing overwhelming odds. However, it's not true.

Healing of lame man (St Peter's, Rome)

The truth is that "God is for us", i.e. on our side, or as Jesus put it, "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." And the point is this: that we are the means through which God wants to transform the world. It's not just about our transformation. God wants to transform the world He made and we keep spoiling. He wants to restore it to His original intention, through us, His Church - which means we can't retreat behind closed doors. Like the Pentecost Church we have to spill out on to the streets. However, doing so under our own steam, because we've "got the idea", isn't transformative. The apostles are told to "wait... until you are clothed with power from on high", i.e. until they receive God's Spirit.

God's life-giving touch (Sistine Chapel)

Ironically, it is our emptiness, our feeling of failure and inadequacy, which best forms a channel for God's love to flow to others. That is utterly counter-intuitive and incredible. But it's true because He is even keener and more able to transform His creation than evil is to thwart Him. He wants to fill us to bring His glory to the world. I have a feeling that this is what St Paul meant by "Christ in you, the hope of glory". I always thought it meant the hope of our glory; now I think it means "Jesus in us is the hope of the creation's restored glory". The reassuring truth remains that it's not through our best laid plans and efforts but through our being who we are in Christ and letting His Spirit have a say that God's transformation happens.  

Come, Holy Spirit!

The lifestyle of lovers

Here's something else that struck me from this year's New Wine. I think this came from Alan Scott.

"Ask questions in His presence. Asking questions is the lifestyle of lovers."

It is after all the nature of love to ask questions - that's how lovers get to know each other. It's all right for us to ask God questions. Ask Him questions not about our brokenness but about His love. I think he's right, that asking each other questions is natural in a healthy relationship. Isn't it natural for us to ask, "Lord, I don't understand how this comes out of your love. Can you tell me?" There can be a difference in the context of our questions, of course. You can ask really not wanting the answer, like Pilate's "What is truth?"or even not believing that God is real. Or you can ask sincerely, because you don't understand how your experience and God's love match up, like "My God, why have you abandoned me?" That's a lover's question.

That rings true, doesn't it? Asking questions of God is the stuff of a true relationship with Him. My friend, Nicky, calls God "Daddy". He is the perfect Father. Who more appropriate to bring our concerns to? Who more natural to seek explanations from? Who better to trust?

Beauty for ashes

You might like to read my Diary of a Dancing Donkey blog, where I described what Julian of Norwich  called a "revelation of divine love". We spent last week at the New Wine Festival, a big gathering of Christians in Somerset, which led to my starting this blog a year ago.

Gorgeous Grace - Click for link

In the end it was an encouraging time for me. On the way I noted things which people said. Unfortunately I was just using my iPod on which I'm very slow, and so they may be approximate quotes. Anyway here's the first of them, from Karen Jones - who's recently published her first novel with the unlikely title of The Babe's Bible - Gorgeous Grace, which I am reliably informed is gripping. As I was saying, here's the quote:

"Our sufferings cost us too much to waste them."

It's true, isn't it? We can either nurse our pains and almost cherish them, clinging to them rather like Gollum and his "my precious" ring. Or we can release them and use them more like St Paul who used his afflictions "to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." 

I think Karen was thinking not only of that, but also of our suffering being a seedbed for the growth of our own maturity and our relationship with God. We can regard suffering as entirely negative and destructive, or we can allow it to be turned to good. I say "allow" as I don't think it's merely a matter of the will. Paul talks about "the God of all comfort" who enables us to pass on the comfort we've received. That has to be the work of the Holy Spirit. And equally it's Him who turns our ashes into a crown of beauty and gives us a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61). It's certainly true that when we're going through suffering like depression or bereavement it doesn't lie in our power to drag ourselves into the light, not really. We may put on a brave face, but it always conceals a weeping heart. But God... "is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine". YIPPEE! 

"Weeping may last through the night,    
but joy comes with the morning."   
So I wait for you....

Through the window

Among his many talents, Martin is a freelance photographer: http://martinart-photography.com/. He has a knack of seeing and capturing the unusual.  He brought some of his work to the MNDA Bake History coffee morning we had here on Saturday. I don't know how much he sold, but I liked this one called Window - so I ordered one of the limited edition. He brought it round today.

The sea and the sky really were that blue. Besides the interesting ruined walls (How many faces are hidden in the stones?), I love the fact that even through the small hole as well as through the roughcast "window" you can see the variety of life in the cliff-top flora and the sea breaking against the promontory. (By the way, any ideas of where the photo is?)

It's a sort of picture of the potential which still lies within human wreckage. You can still find beauty, and life and hope, even when all you yourself feel is a ruin. It's a matter of perspective. You can focus on the ruin or you can focus on the sun beyond.

Sometimes, however, even that view gets obscured by mist or rain. I've just heard today of an inexplicable grief. I have to confess that I have wept for those involved - and I don't understand it. Why does God allow hopes to be so sadly dashed? I don't get it. 

And yet, as I've written in My Donkeybody, I still believe that the sun shines behind the closed shutters. I just can't comprehend the total nature of that Love.

"I'm a failure"

I can do no better than copy this post from the iBenedictines' blog  today.

The Prayer of Incompetence and Failure

by Digitalnun on July 1, 2012
From time to time someone will ask how to pray ‘better’. When we tease out what is troubling the questioner, it usually turns out that he or she expects something to ‘happen’ in prayer; and when it doesn’t, feels a failure. Of course, something always does ‘happen’ in prayer, but not always what we were expecting or hoping for. Remember Naaman and his indignation at being told to wash seven times in the Jordan when he was expecting Elisha to come out and perform some quasi-magical ceremony for him? We can be like that in prayer. We want things to go according to our notions, but God has his own ideas and they are rarely the same as ours.

One of the first lessons any of us has to learn is to pray as we can. We need to keep in mind that God is in charge and rather keener on this prayer business than we are. Our enthusiasm tends to come by fits and starts. Not so God’s. He has been planning this moment of closeness with us from all eternity. That can be an encouraging thought when prayer seems dry and pointless, when all we experience is incompetence and failure. The secret is to keep at it, to go on trustingly with our prayer times. One of the lovely phrases George Herbert used to describe prayer was ‘the heart in pilgrimage’. Anyone who has undertaken a real pilgrimage, walked the Camino de Santiago, for example, will know that temptations to give up crowd in when one is tired and footsore, but one just goes on. So it is with prayer. Incompetence, failure, what do they matter when God has promised us his very self?
Note
There are some simple guidelines for prayer on our main website, here.

Jane tells me the guidelines on the website are very helpful.

I find it consoling that nuns, who I imagine are in the premier league of pray-ers, understand the sense of being a failure at praying. My father, I think it was, had a saying: "Pray, pray - and peg away."