Meditation for dummies

I've been meditating. 

Despite having been brought up on Richard Foster's seminal book Celebration of Discipline (1978) I'd never quite got the difference between prayer and meditation, but the exponential rise in interest in mindfulness has put meditation back on the map for me (though now I'm not entirely sure what the difference between mindfulness and meditation is...)

I came to meditation after a sudden spell of poor health - nothing serious, but scary at the time - and what I realised was that I could, with a few small changes, be a lot more aware than I was of what was happening in my body and mind on a daily basis. The enemy of this mindful state is, of course, busyness; rushing through life without noticing that you haven't slept that well for a few nights, haven't been exercising or drinking enough liquid, say; are upset about something you haven't voiced, or simply that you haven't had enough rest, for example.

The challenge in taking up meditation, though, is to find more time. Because if you're going to practise it on a daily basis you have to find a time of day to do it, and stick to it, and to ring fence that time (and even only 15 minutes can seem long when you're a beginner). You also ideally need a quiet place to sit, which is surprisingly difficult in normal life. Sitting still and 'doing nothing' is counter intuitive since all our cultural training in the West is against 'being' (character, spirituality) and in favour of 'doing' (usefulness, productivity). So not only do you have the practical challenge of carving out time and space, and sticking to it, you also have the intellectual challenge of feeling that it's a waste of time anyway.

I was fortunate that a friend enthused about the benefits of meditation to such a degree that I felt I needed to at least try it. It sounds simple, but sitting quietly and still is really difficult, and the first and biggest obstacle is distraction. The first few minutes of sitting and consciously relaxing, feet on the floor, in a comfy chair (not falling asleep) is all about the thoughts of the day crowding in (what's for supper? why was that driver so aggressive? I haven't read the electricity metre yet...) but the knack is to be aware (mindful) that your thoughts are doing their own thing and to bring your mind constantly back to attention. 

Ideally you need a mantra (repeated word or phrase) to bring you back. For me, this is normally an aspect or name of God (but anything could be substituted). I might say 'thank you God for today', or simply, 'Lord Jesus Christ' or perhaps 'give me your peace'. Every time you become aware your mind is drifting, the 'mantra' brings you back to refocus. Basically (and I'm very much a beginner) the whole 15 minutes is spent bringing your mind back from distraction to focus. Sometimes being aware of your breathing helps, as does conscious physical relaxation, from head to toes.

I've been tempted to give up because I'm so easily distracted and at first it's difficult to see any benefit, but recently I've found that things which were initially distractions (the late afternoon sun on the apple trees) can become aids to meditation. So, the train of thought goes: that view is beautiful, the sun is a free gift, God's a good giver, thank you God, etc. That leads you to gratitude as the focus of meditation. 

What's the point of meditation? Research has shown that meditating can lower stress levels and help mental and even physical health. The reason I'm persevering (despite feeling I could be spending the time better, and the clamour of homework assistance, the unwashed dishes and ebay) is that I feel calmer and more able to deal with the stresses and strains of life; somehow more centered, with the feeling that it does not all depend on me. There's also the massive advantage that faith gives, in that any time and space made for God (which is where meditation kind of seeps into prayer) takes the focus off worry and onto the everlasting arms underneath everything. 

So I'll persevere. I'll share my efforts with other meditating friends. I'll keep being grateful. I'll see what surfaces and what I learn about myself, and others, and situations I've been thinking about. Maybe I'll get guidance on the more tricky situations. And I'll see what effect meditation has on my otherwise rather wordy, frequently shallow and unfocussed, prayer life. 

Four-thirty, cup of tea, chair by the window. Using an egg timer if I really have to (is it still only 4.36pm?). Frankly, if it works for Ruby Wax, there's hope for us all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11181280/Ruby-Wax-on-mindfulness-We-need-to-stop-stressing-about-stress.html

TEACH US TO PRAY 4: PERSEVERANCE

This week our Lent group was, ironically, about what happens when nothing happens when you pray. We've all been there. The somewhat extravagant claims made by Jesus about 'asking anything in my name' were felt by some to be unfortunate, to say the least. Clearly we sometimes ask for things which don't appear to happen, and, in extreme cases, it can make us feel abandoned.

A common one for me was praying the baby would sleep. Or stop coughing. Or not get another cold. Please can we get a parking space at the Dr's. No. Please can I get at least 3 hours sleep before I have to get up and go to the supermarket. No. Please don't let it be chicken pox. It's chicken pox.

Interestingly, depending on your background, it would seem that some people, when things go wrong in life, and prayer doesn't seem to 'work', just think 'this is normal', and carry on with their Christian faith regardless, while others say things like 'what is happening...I don't understand... where is God?' It must just depend on your point of view I suppose.

Problematically, Jesus did go around saying 'whatever you ask for, in prayer with faith, you will receive' (e.g. Matthew 21:22; Mark 11:24 and John 14:13) sometimes adding the handy caveat 'in my name', which does somewhat narrow it down. So what are we to conclude when prayer remains unanswered?

One thing is simply to persevere - it might be a question of timing. Here's a notable difference in how prayer is seen by different people: if you take a 'slot machine' view of prayer, it won't come as a surprise that often the machine won't work and your result will fail to pop out when you want it. However, when the disciples asked 'Lord, teach us to pray', Jesus began by saying 'when you pray, say 'Our Father'. Prayer is a relationship with a loving parent who wants to give us good things. When we persevere in prayer, sometimes over years, we are changed and we grow closer to God. Someone has described it as a father trying to teach his child to ride a bike. The best way is not to hold onto the child as tightly as possible, but hold the saddle instead, sometimes taking your hand off when they're not looking. This way the rider grows in confidence; the child grows up; the believer learns to stand on their own two feet.

It used to bother me that I couldn't honestly say 'I heard God tell me so-and-so' but I've come to realise that divine guidance is more subtle than that. When I look back at so many moments in ministry, to where God's hand seemed very present, I can see I just followed the faintest of hunches, but they for the most part turned out to be serendipitous. 

And where there appeared to be silence, it didn't necessarily mean absence. 

A final thought we took away from the group this week was that perseverance, when you keep going in the face of (as yet) unanswered prayer, develops in us something even more precious than faith. And that's faithfulness. This quality shines in so many persevering Old and New Testament characters, who themselves lived with unanswered prayer (including Jesus) but continued to cleave to God anyway. Much more than singling you out as the lucky one who always hits the jackpot in prayer, faithfulness shows what kind of person you are. Faithfulness is a quality worth waiting for.

TEACH US TO PRAY 3: INTERCESSION

We had our 3rd Lent Course session in the week, and thought about Intercession, aka praying for others. It is perhaps the type of prayer most commonly held to be 'proper' prayer - if people know you are a praying person, they might ask for prayer in the knowledge that praying for other people is very likely exactly the thing prayer is for.

In the Old Testament the word 'paga' is used to describe intercession, and means 'a meeting with an outcome'. It is also used to describe a boundary, a violent meeting and begging. The boundary idea suggests that in intercession we go as far as we can with God and leave the results in his hands. In Genesis 32 Jacob's wrestling in prayer was something of a violent meeting and cost him a dislocated hip. Similarly we do not wrestle in prayer for something and remain unchanged. Finally the Old Testament heroine, Ruth, asked her mother in law not to beg ('paga') her to turn back from going with her into the new life of faith in God. Begging suggests the strongest desire being employed in prayer.

In the clip we watched from The Prayer Course*, a helpful sentence from Pascale's Pensees was quoted: 'God has instituted prayer to bestow upon his creatures the dignity of causality'. In other words, we're not entirely at sea in our requests - what we pray can actually make a difference in what happens or doesn't happen, though we can't always see the immediate temporal connection between our prayers and their outcomes, and shouldn't expect God to dance to our tune. 

Someone from our group spoke of 'getting indignant' with God - of speaking loudly to God in prayer, over and over, until something changes. Getting indignant is a great phrase with which the psalmist would have a lot of sympathy. Some things we want so much we find ourselves saying 'come on God, what are you doing about this?' Ironically, the passion we have for this thing we're begging for is almost certainly put there by God in the first place. Which only goes to show that prayer is a God/human relationship which is, for want of a better term, almost symbiotic. God prays in and through us. We're in on the game. 

There's a delicate balance between having the faith to believe God will act, and the humility to wait on his timing, though. We don't see the big picture sometimes. In the early days of ordained ministry, I had one prayer for the church here, which was really a thinly veiled panic, as I looked out on the largely empty pews and wondered where we were going. It was 'Lord, we need more people'. For a while absolutely nothing happened. Over time the prayer became modified to something a bit more faith filled: 'Lord, send us the people we need' - more specific, and acknowledging that  it's not primarily about numbers, but about the vocations of the people of God. Quite soon after this a small number of new people began coming to the church. It's made a big difference. At the moment, the prayer is morphing into something further: 'Lord, send us the people we need, and those who need us.' With God's guidance and the Spirit's movement, it seems God is graciously answering this prayer too.


*From the Prayer 24/7 movement

TEACH US TO PRAY 2: PRAYER AS WORK

Strange, the things you remember from theological college (probably all the things you weren't supposed to, while other vital things went in one ear and out the other). But a random abiding memory is of the inscription on the door separating the library from the Chapel. It said 'Orare est laborare. Laborare est orare' (prayer is work, work is prayer). I would stare up at it while rummaging in the shelves for another book, for another essay...

It was the Benedictines who emphasised that prayer and work are intimately connected. Originally the emphasis was on work as prayer; that is, while you're in the vegetable garden pulling up leaks in your brown habit, you're to remember that this is holy work, no different from the work of prayer you would achieve in the Chapel after you've eaten the leaks for supper. The earth and the sanctuary are both God's arena.

But I've been thinking about it the other way round this Lent - prayer as work. Because one thing we've been learning in the Lent Group together is that prayer needs perseverance. Without being negative, it would seem that prayer for others especially (intercession) is often like a slow chipping away at a rock face bit by bit, or like dominoes - they're all stacked up and as you persevere, keeping on asking and keeping on seeking, suddenly one of them goes, and then the whole line falls and you have an answered prayer. But it can take a while.

Like most other work, prayer has tools. To get down to real practicalities, you need a place, a time, and anything else physical that might assist. For one member of our Lent Group, a daily prayer book, a rosary, candles and the psalms had all been helpful. I also have a 'box of tricks' - aide memoires that spur me on - a card that says sorry, a picture of a dove, a wooden cross, a reproduction of an icon.

I've also experimented with an egg timer, to make sure I spend at least ten minutes talking to God rather than getting lost in my own thoughts (subtle difference).

Do you need a system for prayer, or rely on the natural flow? 'Natural flow' sounds great, but sooner or later I find it dries up. In so many ways, praying doesn't come naturally. Some people find a system helps. I used to have a days of the week system - Mondays were family; Tuesday, church life; Wednesday, things in public life; Thursday Godchildren, etc. but it got so dry I gave up. For many years I haven't had a system as such, imagining I'm just listening to the Spirit...(or opting out of the hard work?)

This Lent I'm experimenting with prayer cards, an idea from Paul Miller's A Praying Life. Individuals I'm praying for each have a small postcard on which are written some spiritual and physical needs (as far as my limited perception is able to discern) so that prayer for them can be specific and direct. Time Pain writes 'one of our major objectives in intercession is the consecration of the saints' (Ashburnham Insights, Intercession, 1986) and it seems logical. When the saints are all fired up, exercising spiritual gifts and overflowing with the love of God, evangelism and social action tend to flow abundantly. People tend to be 'added daily'. We might not need any new church based programmes for getting people in the building. Sweet thoughts...

As the postcards mount up I can see I'll end up with another box to carry around...but hopefully it will be a step up from a vague 'Lord, bless so-and-so...'

So, prayer as work. Anything that's of value needs work (relationships, learning a trade, mastering golf) so it's no surprise that prayer's the same. If it's also true that work is prayer, I also get the encouragement of realising I might be spending quite a bit more time in prayer each week than I previously thought...(20+ hours, to be precise).

TEACH US TO PRAY 1: A PRAYING LIFE.

This Lent I've been reading A Praying Life, by Paul E. Miller, written in 2009.

There haven't been many books on prayer that've really affected me - School for Prayer (Anthony Bloom - helplessness is your starting point) and the chapter on prayer in Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster - if you care for something/someone, that's a sure sign you should take up the prayer baton), but apart from that, I find books telling you how to pray don't help much. Because prayer is difficult, and eventually you just have to find ways of doing it that fit you and are sustainable, and enjoyable. I don't really want dry theology, I want to know how to do it. And keep doing it. And I want to know how those rare people whom you know to be really prayerful people, get to be like that.

The first thing Paul Miller says is become like a child. He asks the question: can you pray for parking spaces? I gave this one up ages ago - of course not - it's selfish. Or is it? He simply points out that small children don't double think. They don't weigh up 'shall I ask for this, or not?' they just ask. They chatter away to their carer all day long, because they're open and innocent.

Jesus told us to ask for things, often without caveat, so why don't we? Why do the really important things that get us down, remain untouched by deliberate, change-announcing prayer? Miller suggests three areas where we don't ask. We don't ask for change in others (too difficult); we don't ask for change in ourselves (too scary) and we don't ask for real change in our culture (too overwhelming). Instead we limit our requests to narrow religious themes and forget that God is concerned with the whole arena of life.

He writes, 'most of us isolate prayer from the rest of what God is doing in our lives, but God doesn't work that way. Prayer doesn't exist in some rarified spiritual world; it is part of the warp and woof of our lives. Praying itself becomes a story' (p. 168).

He constantly talks about where real prayer meets your real life. I often hear people say 'I don't pray for myself', but what if that is precisely what God is longing for? True and real admissions of weakness, boredom, longing and anger would be a breath of fresh air in corporate prayer life. I'd much rather someone say 'I'm absolutely fed up with God', than 'I think we should pray for my neighbour's friend's daughter's mother in law, who lives in Glasgow'. Maybe that good lady does indeed need prayer, but what about you? If the Psalmist hadn't prayed for himself, we wouldn't have any psalms, basically. 

But we are people of experience too. And we know that things don't always happen the way we want. Things go wrong - often the very things we hope and pray won't happen. We get ill, our jobs and relationships fail; we get disappointed; our dreams remain unfulfilled. 

So what's going on when we ask and 'nothing happens'? 

Miller's book is really good on this. Firstly he talks about the desert, that metaphorical place where you're forced to go when things are really tough - it can be scary, lonely and painful. But it's here you learn what your real desires are. So not hearing the answers you want straight away ends up serving an important purpose. 

A good Lenten theme, the desert. Miller goes as far as to say 'God customises deserts for each of us' (p. 184), a statement I found initially hard to digest. Is God some sadist constantly wanting to test me out? It all comes down to your view of God, I suppose. If you trust God more than anything else in the world, you'll come through the desert. Jesus did. As Miller puts it, 'the desert is God's best hope for the creation of an authentic self...desert life sanctifies you. You have no idea you are changing...After a while you notice your real thirsts. The best gift of the desert is God's presence' (p. 184-5).

Secondly (and the best bit of the book for me) he talks about the bigger stories we're living in. When your prayer isn't answered you need to look at the bigger picture, not give up (maybe God isn't interested; or he doesn't care; or my problem isn't prayer-worthy). What is the larger story weaving through your life, that this particular prayer not being answered is part of? He writes, 'often when you think everything has gone wrong, it's just that you're in the middle of a story. If you watch the stories God is weaving in your life, you, like Joseph, will begin to see the patterns. You'll become a poet sensitive to your father's voice' (p. 203). 

It does rather throw into relief all those prayers you wing upwards a bit desperately, only to see them come crashing down again seemingly unanswered. We're all in a hurry to see stuff sorted. We want God to dance to our tune. But something else, something long term, something better is happening. 

Having been off with a health issue all week, I've had plenty of time to ponder, to be with a body that's being weird. What is God doing longterm with me, with you? Miller describes what prayer was like as he and his wife battled longterm to pray for their severely autistic daughter: 'it was work, prayer, mistakes, frustration, more work, more prayer, breakthrough, work, prayer and so on' (p. 199). It hints at the relationship between human effort and God's sovereign action, another prayer-related conundrum that has kept theologians busy for centuries. 

All in the book manages to combine a childlike approach with wisdom and authenticity, not an easy balance. I'm all for childlikeness, but I also know that in life, 'stuff happens' (polite version). Cynicism is deeply unattractive, particularly in clergy, but naivety does not cut it either. Things are often not simple and God is not a benign slot machine. There is a real mystery to prayer, but that doesn't mean we understand zero: 'something mysterious happens in the hidden contours of life when we pray. If we try to figure out the mystery, it will elude us. The mystery is real' (p. 126).

When you meet a rare soul who combines real child like closeness to God and deep wisdom, it is compelling. How do they do that? I can't think of many people, but there are one or two. One of them, via social media, inspired me to read this book, though they may never know it. Thank you.

Keep awake!

Mark 13: Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ 

I wonder what your relationship is with sleep.

For some it’s blessed relief after the business, or busyness, of the day.

For others it’s something that’s troubled – difficult to get into and difficult to sustain, full of tossing and turning, with restless dreams.

Some fall seamlessly into 8 hours of the deep and dreamless, while others struggle to get 3 or 4 uninterrupted hours at a time.

How much sleep do you need and how much are you getting?

Someone wise has said that ‘the amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.’

Some other, wise quotations on sleep are: ‘people who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.’

Hemingway said, “I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.”

An eminent doctor said “You’re not healthy unless you’re sleep is healthy” and Anthony Burgess remarked, “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone.”

My favourite personal anecdote about sleep took place when our eldest was a toddler.

It was a hot day and it was tea-time. He was sitting in the high chair after a big tea when Daddy came in from work.

Some of you know Chris has recently got a Bishop’s Permission to preach and is going to undertake some training to this end in the new year.

In those days, Chris was new to preaching and he had written a talk that he was preparing to give in church.

He’d sweated hard over this talk and he decided to try it out on me, at the tea table.

Our toddler was happily finishing his sandwich, and seemed content to carry on sitting there, and so Chris began.

He was very proud of that talk – he’d put a lot of effort into it and had thought through the bible passage carefully and thoroughly.

He began. I listened.

It was an idyllic family scene.

In those days we only had one toddler and he was pretty settled, sitting happily in that high chair, although it was a hot day…

It’s quite helpful to read a talk out loud, and Chris was getting into his stride.

Five minutes elapsed. It was a good talk.

Ten minutes and he came to his final, serious point.

He hadn’t looked up from his paper, but now he did, with a hopeful look on his face.

“What did you think?” he asked.

I said something encouraging. He turned to our happy toddler, and as a joke, asked, “What did you think?”

Our well fed toddler, having been ignored for ten whole minutes, though he was sat in a stiff high chair and was normally quite active and wanting to run around after tea, was absolutely fast asleep.

We both dissolved into helpless laughter.

Hoping that the same effect is not achieved at the end of this talk, let’s ask ourselves why it is we are asked to stay awake in today’s gospel.

Of course it’s the beginning of Advent, and we’re reminded that Christ is returning.

Mark records that Jesus taught about the coming of the Son of Man at the end of time, and the first Christians lived in expectation of this event being fairly soon in the future.

May years have passed and we still wait.

But just because it's been a long time, we don’t give up the expectation, and part of Advent is about recalling this hope yearly, and asking ourselves, how should we live in the light of it?

Three times in the gospel Mark records Jesus as saying ‘keep alert; keep awake.’

Because ‘about that hour (that is the hour of the return of Christ) no one knows.’

‘Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.’

‘Therefore keep awake, for you do not know when the mater of the house will come.’

If you know a burglar is operating in your area, you don’t become complacent about security; you tighten it up.

Because you know you need to be ready, you act in certain ways.

You tighten up the windows; you lock up the shed and double lock the front door at night.

We’ve all seen the films where someone’s trying to penetrate a high security setting, like James Bond or Johnny English, and first you see them approaching the CCTV, wondering how that's going to go, and then there’s a shot of the security guard…

He’s usually a big guy, not terribly bright, and ah, what a surprise, he’s fallen asleep (or been drugged with a sleep potion).

Whoever it is creeps past the camera and gains entry right under their nose.

When that guy wakes up and sees the CCTV footage he’s going to be in for big trouble.

Keep alert! Keep awake!

It’s the message of Advent.

So, given Christ is returning, how should we live?

How do we keep awake, spiritually?

If someone said to you, what’s it like to be spiritually awake, what would you say?

How would you describe a spiritually awake person?

Here are three suggestions for keeping awake spiritually (you’ll have your own I’m sure).

    Be prayerful.

We had an interesting discussion at PCC about how prayerful we are as a church.

We asked the question, to what extent do prayer needs of our community reach our ear and then reach our worship on Sundays?

Could we pray for each road in our parish, as they do in some churches?

How do we feel about midweek prayer groups, honesty in prayer and praying for ourselves?

When did you last read a book about prayer?

What strategies do you have to be a prayerful person?

Do you know God’s guidance in prayer; have you learnt to discern his voice?

Can you sit for five minutes in silence, in the presence of God, and know his loving gaze upon you?

When did you last offer to pray for one of your neighbours?

Be informed.

It’s a bit like Have I Got News For You.

If we don’t know what’s going on in the world, how can we pray for it?

As a little barometer, here are some current or recent stories: how well up are you on them?

What are the hot topics in the UK at the moment?

*Immigration

*Child sex abuse scandals

*Black Friday

    Finally something that we need Christians to do deeply, wisely and theologically: 

    Reflect.

Reflecting on the news is a step deeper than merely consuming the news or even praying about it.

It involves being prophetic.

How does God see our nation? What is really going on spiritually?

So with immigration: what is fact and what is opinion?

How do the newspapers sway our opinions?

How does Jesus view the stranger?

What do the Scriptures say about the stranger, the poor and the weak?

In which of our MPs do we see the fruits of the Spirit? Are they people of good character; are they wise?

Child sex abuse scandals: What kind of country are we where large numbers of children are routinely abused and civic bodies fail to notice or do anything about it?

Where is repentance?

How do we value children in our own community?

Black Friday: why is it that people will crush each other underfoot in supermarket queues to get £20 off a coffee maker? What are our values? What could the Church’s contribution be to this?

 How do we stay awake?

1. Be prayerful. 2. Be informed. 3. Reflect.

During this Advent time, may God give us grace to stay awake and to grow together in these three things. 

Amen. 

Outside the comfort zone

The vastness of the Pacific, off Vancouver Island. Overwhelming even when calm. July 2014.

Trinity 8A

From Matthew 14: 22-33, Jesus walks on water.

Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ 

Today in church we thought about the story of Jesus walking on the water. In itself, it's pretty amazing. Why does Jesus display his divinity in this way? He so often seemed to hide his real nature (the so called 'Messianic secret') but here he does his own thing, regardless of anyone else. Perhaps. Or perhaps not...Perhaps he knew the disciples were out there, needing a divine encounter. Perhaps he just enjoyed being God in the flesh and doing God-like things once in a while. I personally like a perplexing Jesus sometimes...

The phrase 'outside your comfort zone' may be a relatively modern one but it describes exactly how it must've felt for the disciples to look up from straining at the oars on that windy night, seemingly without the help of their Master present with them, and to see him approaching in such a mysterious and other worldly fashion, fresh from his 'night on the bare mountain'. 

(I hear the voices of 'reason' saying 'you can't believe that he really, actually walked on water can you? It's just not possible...' but to be honest, when you're dealing with the supernatural, anything is possible).

But the very human side to the story begins in the second half of the reading. The disciples, crying out that it must be a ghost, are addressed by Jesus across the roar of the wind: 'Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid' (verse 27).

And the story could stop there. It would be good as it was. But it continues, with Peter's response. A display of divine power calls forth some response, and out of all the disciples, it was going to be Peter who would want to join in. 

'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water', says Peter. Jesus simply says 'Come'. And so Peter does. He gets out of the boat, in the wind and the waves, and begins to walk towards his Master, doing exactly what the Master does. But. And there's a big but; and it's a 'but' which I understand only too well, having spent a significant part of my summer holiday doing things and going places way out of my particular comfort zones (viz. flying, boating, climbing and going up high things in cable cars).

The 'but' is that Peter, understandably, forgets to look at Jesus and looks at his circumstances instead. The wind, the waves, the it-not-being-normal-to-walk-on -anything-other-than-dry-land business. Like me, looking out of the airplane window and thinking about the altitude and the 200 mile an hour clouds rushing by and the time zone changes and the cabin air pressure and thinking 'this is just not normal...'

Poor Peter: 'but when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, 'Lord, save me!' Peter's cry is the basic cry of the human condition before a righteous and awesome God: 'Lord, have mercy'. 

The proper response to Jesus walking on water, calling us to follow, saving us and stilling the storms of life, is of course, worship.

Being 'outside your comfort zone' is perhaps a glib phrase, but outside can feel an extremely uncomfortable place. 

We thought in church of those we knew for whom there appears to be no comfort, or of our own situations where life has strayed outside of what feels good and normal, whether through relationship breakdown, addiction, relocation, bereavement, unemployment or illness. I thought of a brave little boy I know who, having just celebrated his 4th birthday, now faces 14 lots of general anaesthetic in order for radiotherapy to be able begin to fight off his recently contracted cancer. I thought of his parents.

Where is the Good News in this gospel story, or in countless stories of people struggling with deep, dark and difficult situations? 

The Good News is not a happy clappy, glib 'I'm okay really'; but a deep knowledge that, like Peter walking towards Jesus and crying out 'save me'; it is precisely outside the comfort zone where we have our deepest experience of God.

And so in church we dropped pebbles into a freshly filled bucket of water to represent each situation before God, as an act of prayer. They sank, of course. 

But not out of sight.

Sensing Lent 25: Walking

Jesus would seem to have done a lot of walking. He walked by the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18); He walked on the Sea (Matthew 14:25); and he walked throughout the towns and villages proclaiming the good news of the kingdom (Matthew 4:23).

As with so many things I've noticed during Lent, the physical leads to the spiritual. The bible talks of walking as a metaphor for travelling through life, with or without God. God also promises 'I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people' (Leviticus 26:12). Famously God walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the evening (genesis 2:8). It's a lovely image of unwinding at the end of a day, seeking fellowship with creation. Sadly, though God was walking, Adam and Eve were hiding. 

Walking seems a good way to pray too. Something about how it clears the head, the rhythm of feet assisting concentration in a a way sitting still doesn't. One foot in front of the other, directing one's thoughts God-ward. As well as a prayer chair, I often make use of a 'prayer hill'. And God's will is often described as trusting one step at a time.

Famously, the book of Psalms opens with walking: someone is blessed if they don't 'walk in the counsel of the wicked (Psalm 1:1). St John also wrote 'If we say we have fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie' (1 John 1:16). And sometimes we have to 'walk through the valley of the shadow of death' (Psalm 23:4). 

And lastly, and very simply, wouldn't it be lovely to be like Enoch, who 'walked with God, and then he was not; for God took him' (Genesis 5:22). Walking with God one day; taken by him to glory the next. Perhaps without the element of extreme old age (he apparently lived for 365 years) I'd settle for that kind of walking any day.

Sensing Lent 21: Prayer Chair

Shabby chic is a style that greatly appeals, possibly due to never really having enough money to buy new furniture (apart from once, when we splashed out on a nearly four figure John Lewis sofa).

Down the years, collecting seating in various forms of demise, with various interesting pedigrees, has become a bit of an art form. 

So there's a 1950s nursing chair with a newish cover; an antique Victorian overstuffed chair; a 1980s John Lewis orange two seater sofa covered in crocheted blankets from second hand shops and a squashy feather-filled two seater sofa, bought on eBay after a nerve wracking bidding war, for the princely sum of £1.44.

And then there's the Prayer Chair. The story behind it: we moved into a large clergy house and found ourselves once again short on the seating front. During the first month I was due to see a wedding couple. Picturing them arriving and having to sit on the floor, a small armchair spotted in a skip, and a kind parishioner who rescued it and brought it round, eventually saved the day.

Who was the genius who re-branded second hand clothes as 'pre-loved? Our skip chair is definitely pre-loved. It needed a new cushion, but apart from that, looked right at home from day one. A bit frayed, dated florals (which I'm rather attached to now) dainty, squishy and perfectly proportioned. It was rescued with love and donated with kindness.

And it's the best chair for praying in. Come in, shut the door, turf the cat off, sink in, feet firmly on the floor, light a candle, be still, listen to the ticking clock. And breathe.

Prayed in Dagenham

21st Sunday after Trinity2 Timothy 3:14-4:5...In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable...
Luke 18:1-8The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge18Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ²He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” ⁴For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’ ⁶And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’Whether or not you've been aware, this week has seen industrial action by the NUT and at least 3 local secondary schools were closed on Thursday, giving my kids an extra 6 hours sat in front of the TV.
A couple of years ago I went to the cinema to see Made in Dagenham, a film about the 1968 strike by the seamstresses at the Ford plant at Dagenham, staring Sally Hawkins.The 187 women employees at the Dagenham plant were initially classed as semi-skilled workers and paid accordingly.Their job was to sit at a sewing machine for long hours sewing together the pieces of the car seats which would later be assembled by the men in the main car factory.

At the beginning of the film, it is announced that Ford bosses in the USA have re-classified the women as unskilled workers and reduced their pay accordingly.Understandably the women are mortified and outraged at their demotion and arrange a one-day strike.The bosses refuse to accede to the demands of the women, who rapidly realise that the wider issue at stake is one of equal pay with men.They end up striking indefinitely which soon leads to very real tensions within the whole community in Dagenham as, without the women sewing the seats together, there are soon no cars coming off the production line at all, and none of the men can work either.

Cue scenes of domestic tension in kitchens and sitting rooms up and down the region, to the backdrop of realistic 1960s decor.
Everyone’s pay is withdrawn and things become really tough.Equal pay sounds like an admirable goal to pursue but at what cost?As this is, admittedly, a feel good film, there is never any doubt that eventually the woman will get what they desire.There’s the inevitable scene when they travel to Downing Street, no less, to present their demands to the Secretary of State, Barbara Castle, played in flaming red hair by Miranda Richardson.She is sympathetic to the women, to the horror of some of her male colleagues, and the film ends with the women seamstresses returning to work, all smiles and victory salutes, with the promise of equal pay ringing in their ears.

In a film postscript, the credits inform us that the Equal Pay Act was passed within two years of that strike.In addition there are clips of interviews with the actual 1968 seamstresses, women now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, feisty women who, whilst looking a lot less glamorous than their young film star counterparts, are women you would not want to cross!However they had one thing which was vital: they had ‘RIGHT’ on their side.

At some fundamental level, the basic human rights we enjoy in the West– the right to vote; the right to be paid for work; the right to religious freedom – are acknowledged to be worth standing up for.In our reading we heard about another doughty woman - the widow and the unjust judge.
This woman is one of Luke’s powerless ones, along with Jairus’ sick daughter and the elderly haemorrhaging woman and the poor widow who only had two small coins to live on – but the powerless ones have God on their side...Jesus, particularly in Luke, has a special place for the poor and for women.A particularly vulnerable group in first century Palestine, widows had no welfare state as a safety net.To be a widow in Jesus’ time, without wider family, was to be one small step away from destitution.A widow in this very position is the heroine of our story today.She comes to the unjust judge and pleads for justice against her adversary.Jesus doesn't give us many details but it’s possible she is owed badly needed income and is being denied it by her opponent.
The Greek plays around with the notion of righteousness in the text, so that the widow’s opponent is referred to as the anti-righteous one.In the world’s eyes the widow’s opponent is the one with the power, but the way God sees things is different.In God’s schema the widow has right on her side.And she knows it.Her daily perseverance towards the unjust judge eventually wears him down.

We are given a glimpse into his psyche in verse 4, which says that for a while he refused to grant the widow justice, but then he has a conversation with himself.Jesus shows his mastery at story-telling here, and it’s meant to be funny, though the translation in our reading masks the humour.Let’s rediscover it: the judge says: ‘though I have no fear of God, and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming’ but the Greek could also mean ‘yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face (give me a black eye)’!So the judge decides to grant the widow justice, not because he is righteous, but through her sheer feistiness and perseverance.The helpless widow was not quite so helpless after all!Jesus ends, ‘And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?’

I wonder what you make of this comparison of God with the unjust judge…Has Jesus in this story run the risk that we might think God is like the unjust judge in that He appears unwilling sometimes to answer prayer?
Is it that God can’t be bothered with us, but gives in when we wear him down?Why did Jesus tell this story?Luckily we’re told at the beginning: it is so that we should keep praying and not despair.Losing heart, or despair in prayer, is insidious.We may not be wringing our hands as such, but have we secretly abandoned hope that God can have the last word in human society?

Have we unconsciously adopted the mindset that sees a reduced church, trudging along as best it can, in the face of widespread secularism, as rather a sad picture, with God somehow a bit helpless on the outside?We may be tempted to unfaith in the face of unanswered prayer.And then there’s the great, as yet unanswered prayer: ‘Maranatha’ – Lord, come again.For those of us living 2000 years after this story, it can seem like Jesus has forgotten to come back.For us who live reasonably comfortable lives this may not be a big issue.But for the poor, those denied equality, those who live in fear of the powerful and violent, the coming in of the full kingdom of God can seem like a long way off.
Justice will be done when Christ returns.
And we can start being concerned with justice in the here and now.

 So to sum up: Jesus tells this parable so we persevere: if the unjust judge can finally grant the widow justice, HOW MUCH MORE will God grant justice to those who cry to him day and night?
We must not despair. And we must not be apathetic.

In our other reading Paul also urges Timothy to consider the eternal framework for justice: ‘in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires’.

Is there something you are constantly bringing to God, which yet appears unanswered?
Keep persevering.
We are not called to look for miracles, or dictate timings to God. We’re called to persevere to the end.
And finally, a plaintive end to Jesus’ story...
An ‘And yet’...
‘And yet’: always a little moment of anxiety, of reflection, of questioning.
And as Jesus leaves it open, so will we:
‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’
Will he find real disciples, real faith amongst us?
AMEN.