The Contemplative Crisis

Last weekend I was at a Quiet Day retreat. It was raining  (not drizzling or intermittent showers, but raining), which had the effect of settling us down quite quickly. The Quiet Day was focused on preparing for Christmas by meditating on several readings from the gospels. As I was reading Lk 1:26-35 I was struck by Mary’s attitude. She expressed a willingness to allow God to invade her life (“. . . the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will over-shadow you . . .” 1:35). She had a willingness to become a part of God’s great and grand plan (Lk 1:32-35). It would mean she would be throwing away her future, whatever that might have been and to allow God’s future to become her own. She had no way of knowing exactly what that future would look like, the pain it would be to her, the cost and what shame and misunderstanding she might be forced to live with. Yet she threw herself into the raging torrent of the waters of God’s will, trusting the outcome.

I am thankful she was as young as she was, perhaps a teenager of about 16 years old. A certain naivety is sometimes a good thing when it comes to responding to God’s invitation to do something in our life or his call to draw us away from our natural place or inclination. In contrast, I would like to know the outcomes, the answers and prefer the safe course of action and am most likely to claim that this is ‘God’s will’. I sometimes have a ‘do anything God in my life but just don’t disturb me’ attitude. And don’t let your future God so invade my future that what is mine becomes yours. (It’s dangerous to pray the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done . . . ‘)

I am in the process of having discussions with a church about moving there to accept a call to become their next minister. After four very happy and settled years at All Saints, both the bishop, the circumstances of where I am currently serving and it seems, God, wants me to move. But it’s scary because of all the things which can go wrong and the type of churches I could end up in. Thankfully, God is quite adept at getting through my defence systems with a fairly simple strategy. He constantly loves me (which I often forget) and provides the gentle assurance that the future will be ok despite my worst case scenarios. Somehow, beyond my conscious awareness, he is working through the Holy Spirit to give me the courage to be a little reckless, open and willing to throw myself into the raging torrent of his will. Perhaps one of the tasks in mid-life is to recover that sense of naivety which youth possess, despite what we might know about the world and what can go wrong.

The picture which is above, is the view from my bedroom window. The golden tree to the right is a golden robinia which was planted about a year and a half before I finished the house and moved in. I deliberately planted it when constructing my house so I would be able to see it from the lounge room next door and from my bedroom. Most mornings I sit on a timber box that stores blankets which is opposite this window, to pray, meditate, read and ponder. This box looking out the window is my sanctuary, a place I return to regularly to find a place of peace, restoration and time away from everything else. It is the equivalent for me, of the monk’s cell.

I’ve found over the years that just by returning to this same place moves my body and heart into a place where I am able to be attentive quickly to what’s going on in my life at the time. Its as though just be getting there, I settle down in a minute or two I’m ready to pray. Jesus had such a place on the Mount of Olives (Matt 21:1, 24:3; 26:30; Lk 21:37; 22:39, Jn 8:1), and probably used the garden of Gethsemane in this way also. He had been there on many occasions so that when Judas went looking to betray Jesus, he knew where to find him.

The word sanctuary suggests a place which is safe and away from the chaos and the things which threaten our lives. According to the dictionary (Merriam-Webster online dictionary), it is derived from the Middle English seintuarie, sanctuarie, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin sanctuarium, from Latin sanctus – a place which is literally set apart as holy. It is the place we turn to when not only our public world is threatened, but more particularly, when our interior world is a swirling pool of mixed emotions.

Sometimes the place we find to be a sanctuary is called by a different name, such as ‘a prayer closet’. It might be a church, but it does not necessary have to be a physical place or building but might be a ‘place’ which is experienced when we are surrounded and supported by friends.  This might be when they gather around to prayer with and for us. Some have as a sanctuary, their favourite park, or a grove of trees, a national park or a retreat house to which they periodically return,. For introverts like me, they are the watering holes which the Australian Aborigines knew about that are a day’s walk apart which enabled them to walk across the desert.

For many Australians who live in the cities on the coast, they have a beach house or as the Tasmanians are fond of calling their holiday house, ‘a shack’, which can be anything from a rough hut to a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom house of palatial proportions. They retreat to their beach house to escape the summer heat as well as the pressures and demands of their busy daily lives. Is it right to regard their holiday houses as a pseudo-sanctuary just as some have regarded taking time off work to simply shop as a bastard Sabbath? From time to time I’ve stayed in these holiday houses and enjoyed the rest and returned refreshed. But where is God in this? Has he been the focus of the experience as the origin of the word suggests – a place sanctified for God’s use? I get the impression that many in the Christian faith do not think much about having a sanctuary in their lives,  or constructing one which is a shame, as they are vital if we are to find a way and a place to be renewed by God’s presence and Spirit. What do you have as your sanctuary?

The story of Martha and Mary is a well-known one of contrasts: the activist Martha busy in the kitchen preparing food for the her family and her visitors: the disciples and Jesus. Meanwhile, Mary is often portrayed as the contemplative due to her position at the feet of Jesus drinking in his teaching. Eventually Martha emerges from the hot kitchen and vents her frustrations to Jesus and tries to bully him into getting him to get her sister back to the kitchen. (An appeal to the highest authority, God himself.) But this is an incomplete approach to the text. For example, due to the influence of recent feminist theology it has been increasingly common to see Mary as a disciple of Jesus on account of her position at his feet: to sit at the place of learning for a disciple.

Martha is in her kitchen, which is not in itself a sin, nor is her service to be discounted or regarded inconsequential. Her work could theoretically bring her closer to God (as Brother Lawrence has highlighted in his book The Practice of the Presence of God), but it does not. Her problem is that she is like the elder son in the parable of the lost son; she serves with the wrong motive and has lost perspective on what is valuable. Her work only makes her angry and envious of her sister. She must justify herself by tangible results.

Although we profess an inner desire to emulate Mary’s stance and would desire to be a contemplative, the more common reality is that the bossy voice of Martha is remembered and continues to ring in our ears when we begin to consider stopping, sitting and listening at the feet of Jesus. If any of us are to pursue a life of listening to Jesus, this voice of Martha has to be dealt with. What exactly is wrong with Martha? She can always find more work for us to do. Even good, apparently holy work, such as serving Jesus can be endlessly justified. There is simply no end to what this woman can find for us to do. But doing good works has lost its significance and has become onerous. If we allow her to take charge of our lives, or worse, our churches, she will kill both us and herself.

To embark on the path which Mary took is not to deny or disregard the place of Martha’s service and activism in our daily life. We must make concrete choices and practical ones, but we should not see work and prayer as either or choices, but as necessary parts of a whole. This is the genuis of the Benedictine way of a life of prayer: ora et labora.  We are called to live life in the place where we are learning and living in the presence of Jesus. Times of prayer are there to support and deepen the presence of God in our daily activities and not replace our responsibilities. The major problem of Martha is that failed to see the opportunity which the visit of Jesus gave to experience his presence and to enjoy him.

(The picture of Martha and Mary is by the Chinese artist He Qi.)

A casual comment by a fellow student in my first year church history class has always stayed with me. We had been studying the first century of the early Church and after about six weeks, my friend commented how surprised he felt that the early Church had become quickly corrupted. For him, the Church had descended from a simple faith and pure worship and turned away from the teaching of Christ to descend into doctrinal controversy and division. He tended to see the first three centuries as a loss of innocence. But what he had said about the early Church could equally be said about Israel’s worship of God. Within months of their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, they had cast an idol, held a feast and then rose to dance in revelry (Exodus 32:1-6). How could things go so terribly wrong?

The story from Exodus highlights that we should not be surprised when Christians today do virtually the same thing today. We retain the same deep impulse to create images which will aid us in our worship. Contrary to 2 Cor 5:7, we prefer to walk by sight and not by faith. It was with mixed religious motives and base ones at that, which led God’s people in Exodus to coerce Aaron to make this idol for them. These motives still exist within our hearts. We want certainty rather than cloud and fire (Ex 19:16) and we want God to be more like a little deity which blesses us on demand, than a thundering God who invites us into a covenant which has conditions imposed on us.  We want a domesticated god who will do our bidding. That’s why idolatry breaks God’s heart; it highlights we just don’t understand him – or ourselves.

Every now and then I feel like one of those explorers who comes into town and runs a slide show about their trip to some exotic location or mountain climbing exhibition in Nepal or SW Tasmania. When does this occur to me? It occurs when I get up and preach to the congregation where I am a minster. Standing before the congregation, I feel like one of those travellers or mountain climbers who has returned with a set of slides to inspire and to challenge others to come with me on my next trip.

The most recent exotic place I have visited is the Old Testament; more specifically, the book of Exodus and the wilderness experience of Israel (Exodus ch 17). Israel’s experience of the wilderness and God is our experience also. It is quite a common experience of others in the New Testament. John the Baptist was in the wilderness before he descended into the Jordan River to preach and baptise (Mk 1:4). Jesus following his baptism and the accompanying theophany of the Father’s voice and the descent of the Spirit was driven immediately by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days (Lk 4:1). Saul/Paul went into Arabia following his dramatic conversion (Gal 1:17). It should not surprise us that we are sometimes brought into the wilderness for a time where we learn much about God and ourselves in the silence. Why are we led by God into the wilderness like Israel? We cast off the non-essentials and become leaner, more resourceful and learn how to survive, alone with God. The solitary life helps us disengage from the things which preoccupied us back in the town. We are purified of the temptations and inner compulsions. There is no mobile phone coverage in the wilderness to drown out the voice of God.

To the average person busy with their humdrum jobs and raising kids, these explorers seem to be irrelevant and possibly irresponsible inviting others to put their lives in danger in the pursuit of adventure. Who needs to know about the people who live in a yurt in Mongolia? Or for that matter I would like to add, the men and women who lived in the Syrian and Upper Egyptian desert in the 4^th century? For some, like me, I answered a call to explore a terrain beyond the conventional boundaries set by my peers. They feel it is both unnecessary and perhaps dangerous to go out beyond there.  It was not that I was bored, but that I sensed something lay beyond what was on offer and the standard tourist attractions. Events in my life led me to pursue the wilderness as a place of safety. I thought at first that it was due to my poor decisions and reactions which had led me here. After some time, I began to recognise and become comfortable with the idea that perhaps this was God’s idea first of all and in fact, a fairly normal experience.  “Pity no one had taught me about it before I found myself here”, I thought.

How do we survive in the wilderness? Recognition that God is with us, perhaps in a different form from what we expect. Theophanies do occur, be it the dramatic fire and cloud and voice on the mountain, or the small still voice (1 Kings 18). We should use the times when God is blessing us to prepare for the time of wilderness which comes. (One of the Rules of discernment of St  Ignatius of Loyola.)  Several ways we can do this is by the memorisation of Scripture and also good quality Christian literature to be a helpful guide.  Taking the time to learn the basic spiritual disciplines when in a good place also prepares us. The regular practice throughout the year of spending time alone on a retreat helps too in helping us to adjust to the environment we will encounter and to renew and strengthen our spirits so we are stronger for the day when we will have to begin the journey. Allowing the wilderness to disengage us and letting go are prerequisites to becoming comfortable with terrain.  The landmarks in the wilderness are there, but we need new eyes to see them. Journeying  along is made easier and safer by having companions. Who can you ask to go with you? This is a common role for the spiritual director to provide: both guidance and companionship. Not being in a rush to escape the place also helps: it will take as long as it takes (to do its work in us), so let’s learn to trust God and his timing. There are probably more things we can do to survive a time in the wilderness, but I’ll leave you to suggest some.

As a minister, I don’t want to be a purveyor of religious feel good religion offering a consumerist model of religious experience or quasi religious platitudes which are attached to an anthropocentric faith. (I attended a funeral recently held in another denomination’s church and was surprised at how little worship was offered and how much focus there was on the deceased and their achievements.) It is not that I want to avoid looking like a hypocrite, it is because to sell this modern religious stuff does injury my sense of calling; it leaves me both empty and disillusioned. If I were to keep on selling this religious stuff, the end would be emptiness, then bitterness and cool cynicism.

I don’t want to play it safe keeping to the paths found in the  manicured botanical gardens, but want to go out  into the wilderness, to experience the wildness. In her book, “Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith”, Barbara Brown Taylor has a vignette of a theophany. Like all theophanies, it is a dangerous experience to encounter the living God. She has a picture of a mountain on which God has descended in black cloud, flashes of lightening and rumbling thunder. At the base of the mountain one can see little lights on in tents, in which are people huddled in their sleeping bags, either recovering from the experience of ascending the mountain or working up the courage to undertake the dangerous journey which has compelled them to leave their comfortable home and come to this place of wildness. These people, in spite of the dangers, the nay sayers and the consequences, have come to the blazing mountain because nothing else is worth pursuing. The person who has travelled to this mountain returns with something burning in their eyes and hearts and it is this which gives their preaching fire and depth and conviction.

It is not that we return to speak against the comfortable culture of the day which we may do and certainly, our criticisms of this culture and this world will be evident simply by the choices we make and the things we wish to talk about. But we return to offer an alternative, an invitation to go and find the life which God offers, to be open to the unexpected, to relinquish the religious formulas which we use to block the possibility that God is beyond our comfortable theological constructions. C S Lewis did this quite well in his depiction of Aslan, the lion in his Narnia series. To meet Aslan was both terrifying and comforting, depending where you stood in relation to him. We do not do this solely because we have been called by God, but because we have seen and experienced an alternative to the lifeless religion found in the bustling city.

The  following is a shortened submission to the Theological Education board of the Melbourne diocese which is conducting a survey/research into a review of the theological education of priests and what professional development they would benefit from.

One of the first changes I would like to see is that the insistance that an ordinand undertake Clinical Pastoral Education is challenged and the practice dropped. My criticism of CPE is that it is essentially a secularised model of learning and reflection which disengages from the discourse of theology and the experience of God by the Christian. Too often its assumptions are never disclosed, articulated and permission is not granted to critically evaluate it within a theological context. My observation has been that CPE claims, like sociology and psychology, the ‘high’ ground; the place of privilege and that it is in some way more ‘true’ or in the case of psychology and sociology, scientific.

Instead of sending our candidates for ordination for a summer of CPE in a secular hospital setting, why not send them for a summer of work, prayer and reflection in a monastery? By their immersion into this community, they would learn church history, spirituality, theology, self care (a life lived in a balance of work, prayer and rest), personal reflection and value of recreation. They may even emerge from their time with a deeper experience of God! In this (radical) proposal, the way in the future for training priests is by immersion in the past. The Anglican Church in its roots, is and remains to some extent, a child of the Benedictine world of monasticism. But more than that, it highlights a model of Christian community and way of ‘doing Christianity’, which is appealing (a bit too trendy perhaps as I note the trend in the UK), but a way of seeing life and faith expressed in a Christian community that offers a relevance to the suburban church. I note in passing, that monasticism flourished in a society in which the institutions of the state were collapsing and a multitude of competing religious beliefs endured within a multicultural society, a situation somewhat analogous to our own social and religious situation. It was also a reform movement in contrast to the apparent laxity of the church of the day.

I would like the review board to recognize the context in which the suburban and country church is now located. It is a secular, multi-faith, multi-ethnic and increasingly, Post-Modern and a Post-Christian society.  The general population commutes to their place of work and entertainment. Family and friends are scattered across the suburban landscape and connected via a network of telecommunications or freeways. The sense of local community or identity with a locality is held in balance against this wider locale of the greater Melbourne area. (The catch cry: think local and global comes to mind.) We are living through the biggest social, philosophical, technological and economic changes in our Western society in the past 50 years, yet we are still thinking like a country parish in the 1950’s, and this with a lack of strategic planning and organisation. It does not surprise me that with such tectonic shifts in our society that the way a local congregation functions and the training of priests are both being reviewed and discussed.

I am, as it can be seen, not entirely happy with the traditional models of training, most of which are quite consciously painted in extreme and lurid colours. Furthermore, we have privileged the ability to think and abstract knowledge over the ability to do/practice (which I recognise is being addressed in current models of training), and we have neglected to some extent, a conscious appreciation and development of the character of the priest and this influence on a congregation.

To summarise: a major areas of neglect of training of priests has been in the following areas:

the ability as a leader to form, run, train and equip teams;

a lack of serious reflection or articulation about what sort of person we (as priests) would desire to become as a Christian person and expect the members of our congregations to also become.

the ability to learn and practice regularly different spiritual disciplines and to use these disciplines for their own personal nurture and renewal as well as the renewal of their congregations;

the lack of awareness, understanding and place of mission in the curricula.

Responses to the four points above:

(a) How do we help our priests to become ‘team players’? I know it is a dream, but it might highlight what we need in our training and how it might work. I would like to see a group of theology students thrown out of their college for two years to live together as a community (along with their wife and kids as participants as well). Students from of both Trinity and Ridley living together in a parish setting! They would be told to support themselves by working at the local pizza shop etc and rebuild an existing congregation. Study would be part-time. That I think, would teach them many of the areas highlighted above at once. Let the theology  lecturers go into their community to teach them in the context of crisis, struggle, doubt and fighting amongst themselves. Suddenly the letters by Paul and Peter (who are written to dysfunctional congregations or congregations under the stress of the prevailing culture) take on a whole new light. Let their mentorees (they would require them) visit them when their dreams as a community have been shattered and they wonder about whether they can pray together because “I trained at Ridley and I know . . . or I trained at Trinity and this is how we do it. “

Let them through this process, become the broken sacrament of Christ, offering his sweet fragrance to a hurting and broken world who asks: does this work? Is it for real? Is there a God and if there is, what does he/she look like?  Students at both colleges may have romantically read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together”; now is their opportunity to put it into practice.  Christianity is a communal religion due to the initiative of a triune God, so let them learn on the job what this looks like and how it works so they as leaders, will be able to lead congregations into this bigger aim of God to reconcile people and all things to himself. (This was my own personal experience earlier on in life.)  Basically, the ongoing education and support of priests will need to be focused on helping them learn how to be team builders and how to train and equip teams which is a move away from the chaplaincy model of a priest servicing the needs of individuals in a congregation which has the consequence of limiting their effectiveness to the number of relationships they can service.

(b) The question is not what is the role and the training a priest requires; it is, ‘Who are they?’ Or to state it slightly differently, it is not a question of what is their function, but an ontological question, who are they to be. Let me ask the following questions to highlight this issue. Is the lifestyle of your priest one which you would like to emulate?  (I think many appear to be over worked, bossy, task focused, overly prickly about sharing ministry, too intellectual in their sermons and possibly spiritually barren?) Is your own lifestyle (if you are a priest), one which you would be prepared to say to others: ‘imitate me’ (cf 1 Cor 11:1; 1 Cor 4:16, Phil 4:9.) If you were to adopt the lifestyle of your priest, would it be one which would help you to deepen and support your own relationship with God? Is their lifestyle one which bridges the gap between profession of faith and practice in daily life, between God and the world, between what we think the Bible teaches and it is lived out as a father or mother in my family or at work? This reflection is premised on the understanding that who we are and what we are aiming to become as a person, has a huge influence on what we offer to others as a leader, what style of leadership we exhibit and what philosophy of ministry and aims of ministry we have. In other words, who we are matters more than what we do. As everyone knows, we remember our teachers more for who they are than what they taught us.

The example, character and deep spirituality of a priest are the coin that they trade on to effect good administrative and organisational leadership. Leadership is not merely theological knowledge or skill competency, or dependent on a position, but dependent on a foundation of Christian and emotional maturity and character. Who would you prefer as a leader in your congregation? A saint or an accountant who has been a CEO of a company prior to ordination? To quote from Richard John Neuhaus’ book, Freedom for Ministry, “No-one remembers who was running the mega-churches when St Francis was hanging out with the lepers.” (I cannot remember the page number as I am writing this from my office and the book is on loan.) Saints live outside the normal categories and beyond the borders of neat definitions, but they inspire people. They are a sign of what might be and what we might be together in the particularity of a given social context; the church in Australian society. Therefore, we should be expecting and encouraging in our formation, training and education of priests, that they will be aiming high, to become, dare I say it, a saint. (There is a huge difference between sainthood - the institutional accreditation which is often only grudgingly recognized by its hierarchy, and the ordinary call and declaration by the NT that we are ‘saints’.  Above all, they need to be aiming at becoming a saint themselves and will know roughly a path others can follow as well.

(c) I acknowledge that given the variegated and generalist role a priest will play, they do need to be a resident theologian (to use Eugene Peterson’s expression.) They do need to have a working understanding of the sociological influences on their church. They do need to be able to communicate and exegete the Biblical text and to be able to provide basic pastoral care and organisational skill and have a good understanding of the sacramental life which is much of the focus of worship in the Anglican Church. To do this will require the teaching and practice of a variety of spiritual disciplines and their integration in their daily life. Life as a priest, is a religious life and occupation. But it is more. It is a consuming passion. Yes, it does need to be lived out with professional competency if the person is also a priest. But knowing what we are aiming for and the path which can be taken or offered to others for their guidance is paramount before we ask questions about training. We cannot lead others beyond that which we have ourselves gone. The period of theological training and post-ordination professional development must help the priest inwardly grow, mature and encourage transformation, as well as, a deeper understanding of the paths people take and hindrances in those paths to their own relationship with God. I would hope that the number of men and women being trained as spiritual directors as a part of their training would increase. (I assume the committee understands the differences between mentoring, CPE, discipleship and spiritual direction and counselling and the different traditions each has sprung from.)

A priest will also need training and support in understanding their own particular personality and its strengths and weaknesses and the way this helps and hinders a priest’s ministry. Reflection on how their background (social and family) affects them will also need to be given attention so that they do not fall prey to burnout, exhaustion, anger, over work, etc. The role of spiritual direction in this area is invaluable, as is the intentional training and practice of spiritual disciplines before ordination. Simple Bible reading and prayer will not be enough if a priest is to survive and thrive in the long term.

(d) Finally, the social, theological and ethnic context of the current (modern) church needs addressing, particularly the fact we live in a Post-Christian society. The selection of people for ordination should be of those who have the pulse of mission in their veins, whose eyes are clouded by the people they see beyond their church doors. They will need equipping in skills and theology which are cognizant of the issues of pluralism, multi-faith and secularism. Should, for example, Reformation History remain a key component in Church History? No, but it should still be included but in a reduced capacity. Church History should be broadened by incorporating the history of missions and the inclusion of the Theology of Missions in the systematic theology component. In the OT classes, the apologetic and polemic voice in Genesis 1 or Isaiah 40-66 and Jonah should not be silenced by deference to the received tradition.

This new generation of priests will need mentoring for many years as the struggle to develop an indigenous church (viz: Australian Episcopal, not Anglican Church) as the Anglican Church is becoming everything else but Anglo-Celtic in the outer suburbs. Whether this is by replanting or turning around an existing congregation or by starting a new congregation from nothing, it will be required as the age of the attendees of the Anglican Church increasingly age and become more isolated from mainstream society.

So in conclusion, I would like to see a holistic approach to the training of a priest; one which is focused on assisting them become a person who is passionately seeking God; knows the overall basics of theology and ecclesiology, but most of all, basic skills in the leadership of teams and able to train them; the basic skills of planning and a lived spirituality with a missional focus so that they have the ability to form, nurture  and sustain communities of faith.

The person who wants to know God must be prepared to search for him, but we are never quite sure how much this will cost, what will be demanded of us or where it will take us. Initially, it seems simple. Read a few books, perhaps visit a few religious centers or ask those who seem to know. There might be genuine experiences of God; intimations of his presence. The desire increases to find and capture this elusive thing called an experience of God which encourages us to continue.

At various  times I have enjoyed a great sense of certainty: that God was near and had called me. Yet almost as quickly as I felt I had arrived at the place where God was part of my life, this feeling vanished leaving me abandoned.  Then there have been the times when I have grown dissatisfied with the simple answers and the shallowness of what has been on offer by various Christians leaders or churches. The need to leave these places and begin the search again has reluctantly been undertaken. The bag has been packed and farewells made and the pilgrimage resumed. It is only in recent years that I have understood that this is not so much a deficiency in those I have left behind, but a needed corrective to the temptation for me to become complacent, too settled and eventually arrogant, thinking that I have arrived at ‘the truth’. Along with awareness has come the understanding that in our search for God, the way of journey is a common motif for the Christian life.

I was never really aware of how much it would cost me in my search. At first it required me to change my behaviour, attitudes and lifestyle to be conformed with God’s holiness. Then questions developed, technical questions which could only be resolved with extended periods of study in theology. This resulted in first, a two year course which covered the basics in theology. Then a three year degree in the subject. After a few years break, another three year period of full time study at end of which I had earnt a masters in Australian Studies (as I was seeking to integrate theology with an Australian context) and a miscellany of practical theology subjects required for ordination. At the end of this process, my wife and I were financially broke.

But in spite of the financial cost, this was not the greatest cost incurred in a search for God. The biggest cost has come in the form of revising my theology many times to take into account the various events which have had an impact on my life. The death of family members including the murder of one and the death of another in a car accident and the loss of all our furniture and personal effects in a flood have become the tools by which God has been doing something deeper within. Add to this being rejected for ordination by one denomination, voted out by a congregation (after ordination in another denomination) and eventually burnout which resulted in taking a 7 year break from ministry. These too have added to the cost of searching, seeking God and his will. It would have been easier to walk away from the whole project of ‘finding God’. Jesus warns us that to follow him will cost us our life (Mark 8:34-38). We frequently gloss over such statements or the warnings by the writer to the Hebrews that we should be aware of the potentially to drift away (Heb 5:11 - 6:12). Christianity is a choice which is made by us and requires us to persist in our commitment (Phil 3:12-16). (And I write this as a committed Calvinist.)

What leads me to continue in spite of these things? I think it is because there is no other life worth living, no other God worth seeking, no other career (being a minister) which attracts the affection of my heart. The paradox has been that I am I think, most alive when I am engaged in this search, where God is just a little out of reach, perhaps around the next bend in the path.

I’ve been re-reading the Cloud of Unknowing. There have been several books such as this which are worthwhile reading again and again due to their wisdom, insight and guidance for those who seek the face of God – or alternatively, find it obscured. Several others I have turned to for fresh encouragement are John Cassian’s Conferences and the works by St John of Cross to name just a few. I notice that in all these books, the authors deal with the issue of temptation and see life as one of discipline so that we can withstand various forms of temptation. There are the temptations of the fleshly appetites such as for the excess consumption of food, anger or inappropriate sexual expression to name a few. There is the temptation to give up the pursuit of a holy life, the temptation to return to our old life and the temptation to fall into a trap set by the Devil to presume to know God’s will or to believe we have advanced in the spiritual life beyond what we really have. The sayings of the Desert Fathers also discuss these topics at some length. I find their candor refreshing. Yet when we are tempted, there are few with whom we would want to share with. Even within the spiritual direction community, little is said or raised on this topic.

I notice that much of the modern writing on the spiritual life ignores or doesn’t provide any guidance on this topic. It is not that they simply skip over temptation or excuse them on psychological grounds, the books regularly appearing on our bookshelves or online don’t seem interested in discussing the issue of temptation. I guess there are no sales for those who do. The great Holiness writers, the Puritans, John Wesley and William Booth, and even the writers in the Evangelicalism tradition of the post World War Two period all wrote about temptation and faced the issues it creates, but today it seems to have fallen out of favour. Perhaps the modern Church is embarrassed by the pre-occupation with sin and temptation in times past. Perhaps we have been caught up into a collective theological amnesia; one which has been encouraged by a Western cultural emphasis on feeling good about God and our selves. Perhaps we as Christians (here in the West), have simply surrendered to the god Materialism and believed in the lies of it’s minions, the advertising agencies which create the mass media. Perhaps we have acquiesced to the pervasive sense that our needs are more important than denial and gone soft on the stuff of discipline, struggle and fight against the demons within and without.

We are deeply fervent when we mark the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday, but after Easter, the focus on and reality of temptation as it affects us gets packed away with the Christmas decorations until the next year. And yet, the image of Jesus taking off into the wilderness - which Lent seeks to recreate, to fight against the temptations thrown at him by the Devil lingers (Matt ch 4, Mark 1:12-13; Luke ch 4). The wilderness temptations remind me that I am not beyond the very same temptations which Jesus faced. Fortunately the gospel story also provides us with some principles for overcoming temptation, such as the use of Scripture to ground ourselves in God’s promises and to be strengthened by recalling God’s word as a sword of defence against temptation.

I have often experienced the wilderness as a place where the background static of our culture of materialism, sexuality and power is turned right down so the small still voice of God can be heard. As a result, the equivalent of a wilderness experience has been to go on a retreat, but in two weeks I’ll be heading off for a week’s holiday in Tasmania where the wilderness is very close to everyone’s front door. I’ll be doing a few day walks there and perhaps an over night trip as well. Its still winter here and the weather can be quite tricky. I’m not sure I like the cold that much these days to stay out overnight, but I sure need a time in the wild places which provide solitude; a place where my eyes can rest the natural beauty of God’s creation and not the books which have wearied me of late.

Last Saturday, I went with Shirley and my youngest daughter to visit a display of the finalists for the Archibald Prize at the Museum of Modern Art in the Yarra Valley. The picture of the gallery here gives you an idea of how we felt. It was just like the photo even in mid winter. The Archibald is an annual art competition for the best portrait preferably of a significant person by an Australian artist. What interested me, apart from the pictures, was a sign alongside each of the paintings which listed the biographical details of the subject of the portrait and the artist’s curriculum vitae. I came across a portrait of Jessica Watson who was the youngest person to circumnavigate the world. (There is some contention about this as Jesse Martin went further and completed a “proper” circumnavigation.)  A complete display of the pictures by the Archibald finalists can be found here. Apart from this feat, what else could one say about Jessica Watson or for that matter, the artist who had painted her portrait? Descriptions of the artists seemed to make much about the trivial.  So it got me thinking: what if I were to write my own curriculum vitae. It might read something like this:

Rob Culhane was born as the youngest of four children who lived in abject poverty in Collingwood, a working class suburb of Melbourne during the late 1950’s. During this time the suburb underwent a program of slum clearance and the erection of public housing to stem the recurrent typhoid outbreaks. Due however to the influence of his paternal grandmother, by the age of three Rob had learnt to talk, play the piano and the saxophone. After his parents moved to a seaside town in Victoria, Rob learnt to sail. At the age of 16 he circumnavigated the world three times continuously without assistance living on baked beans. Following this achievement he wrote his biography, became a daytime host of the television program ‘Melbourne Today’ and began to write regularly for the Melbourne Age newspaper for their travel section. He obtained a scholarship at the discretion of the academic dean of Monash University and entered as a mature age student, obtaining a Ph.D after three years in linguistics majoring in Xhosa. He is a board member of the St Kilda Yacht Club, the Freemantle Yacht Club, the Anglers Club of Vic (Inc), the mining company Rio International and Abbey International. He is also currently supervising the construction of a hospital in Chad for the aid agency he founded in 2002, “International Health”, a dog house in his backyard and acting consultant and presenter on the forth coming series for the Channel 7 on “How to travel the world on $20 a day”. He is married with 5 children, has a dog and cat and enjoys climbing mountains in Patagonia, downhill skiing in Japan and scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef near Great Keppel Island in summer. For relaxation he plays jazz each Friday night at his local pub, reads Dostoevsky and is learning German so that he can follow the nuanced theological argument Karl Barth had with the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his spare time he enjoys perfecting his photographic skills and crosswords.

I find it interesting trying to discern what drives people – myself included and what it is that causes someone to achieve so much or to promote themselves. It’s not just ‘ego’, a term which has become so debased as to have little value in clarifying what it is within us that makes us strut across the stage of life.  For example, every now and then I run into a ‘senior cleric’ of the diocese or even a bishop who asks,

“Well, you’re coming to the end of your curacy. Are you looking forward to moving on and becoming a priest-in-charge?”

I reply in trepidation, “No. I’m happy where I am.”

They reply (frowning slightly), “But don’t you want the challenge of running your own show, of leadership, of being able to shape a congregation?”

I think for a moment about how I will answer them and how I will let them down gently and in on my little secret – that ambition is all very well indeed, but often congregations want to shape the minister!

So I reply, “I’ve given it some thought and if the right church came up, I’d be happy to move on.”

One consequence of being hurt from church conflict and burnout is that you are forced in recovery, to confront your own ambitions, mistakes and the games congregations play, sometimes it must be suggested, with diabolical motives which should not be underestimated in what they will do to achieve their goals. This is a gift of God from burn out and the stress of living through church conflict. But the assumption lingers on and is alive and well in the minds of some that moving on and up is the way forward – for all of us, in whatever sphere of work we are in. Ambition, I would like to note,  is good, but it is also a double edged sword which we can use to wound ourselves through carelessness, youthful willfulness and arrogance. Even that old fashioned human habit of presumption causes us to get ourselves in some very difficult positions. Somehow, God seems quite happy to use the alpha male to run a denomination or mega church. And the alpha males seem more than happy to pursue such positions too!  I enjoy observing them (like bird watching), at some gathering at which they spend their time nervously watching out for the other leaders which they want to impress. All I miss is the studied tones of the voice over by David Attenborough.

I think this self promotion is due to such influences as what number you are in the order of your siblings. The first born carries a number of assumptions about their place in life and the relative positions of the rest of us. (I say this the fourth born. I’m also married to a fourth born.) Their sense of justice or infraction against their sense of justice is coloured by their position. And then there is the enneagram and its insights into the personality of the 1 or the other eight types. However, we are all, at the heart of the matter, wanting to be recognised by others, to be seen, accepted and affirmed. Some more so than the rest of course.  Our clothes, accoutrements and fashion accessories often speak of our desire to be accepted into the group we aspire to be with. They are purchased to state, in the case of those who wear expensive watches or jewelry, that they have made it. (Tell me, why does a man need a Rolex watch who lives in the suburbs miles from the sea when his mobile phone has the time? Even at sea, he has a GPS system to guide him and often comes with a chronometer. It must be to surely say that I have made it.)

We are often caught in endless games of charades, subtle manipulation, obfuscation, and evasion so we might present ourselves in the best light and to prevent others from knowing  what’s going on inside. On too many occasions I can remember, I have just concluded a deep and open conversation with someone in the foyer of the church or at a party when someone else breezes past with the rhetorical question, ‘How are you?’  To which the person replies, ‘Ah, really good thanks’, even though he has just shared his struggles and pain. Sometimes, like these, their response is a necessary one to protect themselves. Not everyone really wants to know what I’m really like or has the time.

Perhaps when Jesus issues that call to us, to come, deny ourselves, die to our lives (pick up your cross and follow me), he is referring to this life of fiction which we construct. It will not serve us well, but rather, it will imperil our very souls and perhaps cause us to seek the broad road to destruction,  to death.  For those who have crossed the over the threshold to observe the wonderfully inventive games we play will find all this strutting and preening a distraction and sense its emptiness. But in this I am not alone. It is the caustic eye of satirists like J. D. Salinger and Anthony Trollope (The Barchester Chronicles) who have refined what we instinctively know into such a memorable art form. In this light, the burning ambition to be a bishop or someone in the church which can occasionally be detected in some clergy just seems a little ludicrous.

Perhaps once we hear this call by Jesus and see in the veiled glimpses what the kingdom might look like through the parables and teaching by Jesus, we become, to use the phrase by Robert E Park in 1937, ‘the marginal man’,  who is “. . .  condemned by fate to live in two societies and in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures . . .”  This call by Jesus therefore, will be counter-cultural to both society and even the Church itself which has succumbed to the spirit of this age in various degrees throughout its long history.  We have only to cast our minds back to the extravagant claims made by the Medieval Church and the Pope or the pomposity of the late Carolinian Age of the  Anglican Church. It is a dangerously prophetic call, an alternative vision which Christ calls forth from us because we now have a knowledge of the kingdom as well as an awareness of the poisoning influence which our games play in confusing us and distracting us. Even without the opportunity of leaving our day time job and consumerist society to join a monastery, it is the firmness and the faithfulness and the attention to our life of prayer which will continue to support and nurture us.  Who will deliver us from this body of death and endless need to preen and promote ourselves?

By what method can be shatter the mirror we hold up to ourselves and to others to prevent telling ourselves the same half truths and even lies so that eventually we believe in them? It is in the way of contemplation, when we spend time each day observing the mental patterns we play when we drift from our steady prayer of an awareness of God. The meditation on Scripture and allowing its work to single out the things which are awry (cf Heb 4:12-13). Allowing our spiritual director the freedom to probe what we prefer to leave unsaid or unexamined. Who will rescue me from this body – life of silly games I play and others join in? Thanks be to God (Rom 7:25).

Those of you who drop by and read this blog might notice that I rarely comment on the lectionary readings or regurgitate the sermon preached on the preceding Sunday as a means to posting regular blog posts. However, I’ve been reading the story of Ruth and Naomi again and a number of things have struck me about their story in chapter 1 which I think have poignancy and enduring relevance to those who find faith in God and life difficult and wonder, ‘where is God in all this?’

We all know the charming and beautiful story of how Ruth meets Boaz; they marry and it is from this union that the greatest king in Israel’s history is descended. But, I would like to ask you to have another look at the first chapter. Naomi and her husband Elimelech leave Bethlehem due to a famine and move to the country of Moab, the area south east of the Salt Sea (Dead Sea). Not always a good move because the land tends to be more marginal than the hill country of Bethlehem, but they manage to scratch out a living. Adversity again strikes the family: Naomi’s husband dies. The hope of food security collapses when the head of the family dies. The text seems to imply that this was shortly after arriving in Moab. Then Naomi’s two sons marry Moabite women. Not a wise choice for an Israelite as the Moabites were prohibited from participating in Israelite worship and hated for their refusal to allow Israel to pass through their land during the exodus (Deut 23:3-6). In a case of things going from bad to worse, Naomi’s two sons then die leaving her with the two daughters in law. She left with hope, now she has nothing except two Moabite daughters in law who will not be welcome in polite Israelite company. Naomi then receives word that conditions back in Bethlehem have improved and given how bad things have turned out, makes the  decision to return. Then, just as she is leaving, Naomi attempts to persuade her daughters in law to return to their own family’s houses. The older of the daughters in law (implied by their name being first in the text), does this, but Ruth refuses.

Ruth then makes the beautiful promises which are occasionally read out at a wedding. They are in fact, the words of a covenant and have the echo of God’s promise to Israel (‘you will be my people and I will be your God’. (Compare Ruth 1:16 with Jer 30:22, 31:33, 32:38, and Ezk 36:28, 37:23.) Ruth is demonstrating love, faith and hope by entering into this covenant with her mother in law. It is also a covenant of grace and like all covenants of grace, it is initiated by the stronger (Ruth) and entered into with a weaker, vulnerable people, in this case Naomi. Ruth is a good picture/image of what God does for Israel and also us as well, a children of the new covenant. Then narrator devotes one verse (Ruth 1:19) to cover the month long trip back to Bethlehem but then gives Naomi the space in the story to report her response to being away for ten years.

“Call me no longer Naomi (meaning pleasant)
Call me Mara.” (meaning bitter)
for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
I went away full,
but the LORD has dealt harshly with me,
and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.” (NRSV)

When I compare the length of Naomi’s statement of how she feels to Ruth’s glorious promise of commitment to Naomi, they are about the same in my bible, the NRSV. But what a difference! The two stories stand in contrast and highlight the different ways people will respond to the same circumstances in adversity. Yet I will postpone any criticism of Naomi for her response for reasons which will be revealed shortly. It is not a matter as some would suggest, that it is her lack of obedience or faith that has led to her situation. Something deeper is being played out which neither Naomi or Ruth know, even though they have made different responses to the shared situation they find themselves in.

For some of you reading this, Naomi’s story will be your experience as well. It is certainly mine. My family moved from country Victoria a southern state in Australia, to Queensland when I had just turned 16 yrs old. Our furniture was severely damaged being transported there. When I arrived in Queensland, on the Gold Coast, a place for holidays in the sun and surf beaches, I felt as if I didn’t belong with its superficial culture of beach, crass commercialism and conservative state politics. Within months of arriving there, a flood destroyed what remained of our furniture and personal affects (photos, books, letters, etc) which were being held in storage while we looked for a house to buy. Then my parent’s marriage broke up and I eventually chose to live with friends. I had lost my friends down south, all my memories in the flood and my parent’s marriage. I disliked the tropical heat and the politics of this northern state. So I moved back south – but this time to Tasmania. On arriving in Tasmania, I felt like Naomi.

In recent events here in Australia, we have had a horrific bushfire two years and a half years ago in Victoria, a particularly destructive cyclone last summer in Queensland and extensive flooding down the east coast of Australia associated with the La Nina weather pattern which follows the El Nino pattern. Normally, summer in Victoria it is hot and dry: this year it was cool and very wet. Thousands of people have lost everything by these events: homes, businesses, crops, farms and for some, the death of family members. Many marriages will not cope under the strain imposed by these unusual circumstances. There will be many like Naomi.

Those of you who offer spiritual direction will probably recognise the Naomi’s who come to you as well. And here is the question: how do we offer hope to those who have no hope? Naomi blames God for what has happened to her. Many of those who suffer adversity blame God for their circumstances and then seek to regain control over their lives by embarking on religious promises and practices which are designed to get God’s favour again. And they blame themselves.

Just in case that we, the reader of the story, don’t miss the point of the racial and religious difficulty confronting Ruth if she goes into Israelite society, the narrator highlights in last verse of chapter 1 by the order of the words, that Naomi returns with “Ruth the Moabite” - who is her daughter in law. What she has returned with (a daughter in law) is not the most promising thing to bring back with her.

A feature I see in Naomi’s story is one I have encountered many times in recent years. It is the person who has undergone a deep trial in life and now wants to rename themselves as a way of claiming a new identity. In Naomi’s case, it is not a particularly positive image of herself, but this is what she wants to do. I’ve met several who have changed their names. One task of the spiritual director (SDr) is to sit with them and listen to why they want to do this – not to persuade them otherwise, but to validate their story that it really happened to them and affected them to the degree that it has. One person wrestled with this issue of name changing due to the associations their name had to their past life which they found oppressive. In the end, they were able to live with who they were now and their name from their past. In some ways, this was their reconciliation with the two halves of their life.

The spiritual director is always asking themselves and occasionally the directee the question, ‘where is God in all this?’ In the text there is a glimmer of hope: it is the beginning of the barley harvest. The chapter begins with famine (crop failure), now it ends with harvest, there is abundance in returning home. And as we know, but Naomi didn’t, it is Ruth’s going out into the harvest to gather what she can that will provide not just food, the introduction to a new future which will open up. Like the narrator, we are privileged to know the outcome and the enduring legacy with which Ruth gave to the nation. That Matthew records her in his genealogy (with the other women of disreputable backgrounds), highlights amongst other things, God’s gracious way of using those who would normally be rejected and bringing them into this salvation plan. This confounds the religious types who want things tidy, respectable and have distorted views on what constitutes holiness. Throughout the story, it is God who is the main character, shaping events and people to fulfil a greater purpose of which they are unaware of. He is not obviously seen, but the story reeks of grace, grace and more grace, God’s grace. It is not just a story about Ruth and Boaz, but God’s love of Israel, it is a universal story against which we place Naomi’s confession that she no longer believes in God’s goodness or purpose for her life.

As spiritual directors we often sit there, stuck, wondering what might come out of the place of our own Naomi’s who come to us: darkness, death, and despair. We silently begin to pray that our directees might be given the eyes to see where God is at work in their lives when the evidence is to the contrary. Often they and us, see the hand of God in the people God has put alongside them to support us. Ruth is God’s gift to Naomi in her adversity, but at this stage, because it is the early stage of her interior journey, she is unaware that this is the case as she returns to Bethlehem.

How does one bring the word or sign of hope to our Naomi before us when they say, “No longer call me Naomi, but call me Mara”? How do we support our directees, when they blame God for their situation? I think it is at this point we must hope, that by holding them in our hope, that they will eventually be reborn in a new sense of God’s wondrous presence with them. It is our hope in the overall purposes of a good God, and most of all, faith in the surprising gift of the Spirit that he brings hope so that a ‘spring’ of types occurs, a shift, a movement within their heart toward hope. That we as directors are prepared to sit with them in their darkness yet not give way to their grief and despair (as much as we feel its weight and as much as that it touches our own despair), is in itself, evidence of our hope, that there is a future even if we do not know what exactly that future looks like. We sit with them with the assurance to offer them, to use Julian of Norwich’s term that, “All will be well”, even if we do not explicitly say this out loud. Our hope and presence are not just our gift, but more particularly God’s gift to the directee at this point. We hold within us the treasure that hope is the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. We will be hesitant and provisional in naming what the ‘it’ might exactly be, but we have the sense of expectation nevertheless. Henri Nouwen said of hope that it is “the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

Finally, I must recognise that Naomi is still in the first stage of what will be three stages of recovery. At the moment, she is the victim of circumstances, feeling crushed. But there will come the time when she moves on to become a witness, a witness of God’s work within her hopelessness and eventually to agent: being able to make choices according to her perceived needs. As directors we are given the privilege to know that the current situation is not the final one and that this place of death is not the final answer. We live in the hope of resurrection in the midst of death and that given time and care Naomi will move on. Meanwhile we will offer her the grace and mercy of giving her the space as the narrator does in the Biblical account, to tell her story uninterrupted and authentically, honestly even if it challenges my own theology (the Almighty has done this: my God is not like this I hear myself saying. But it is her experience that matters.)

Somehow I must control the urge within to offer the platitudes, to hasten over the raw honesty which embarrasses me and disturbs me and maintain the position of a fellow traveller who is there to support her on her journey from Moab to Bethlehem. Whilst I recognise that Naomi has no ability to imagine any other world than the one in which she has constructed for herself, I must remain patient while we identify together what she hopes for. This will take time, and extended period of time. None of us live in a ‘real world’, but the world which we have constructed for ourselves. This will require the use of my imagination in the sense of being slow to admit that all the facts are in; all the doors tried. Our imagination gives us images which speak to us. At this time, Naomi has few to choose from. But SDrs have caught a glimpse of an alternative to the reality of which Naomi speaks of: the reign of God. Chapter 1 is not the end of the story, but marks the beginning of God’s grace in this women’s life. At the moment she just can’t see it.

What I think we want when we have lost everything is the return of the goods stolen, a new house for the one burnt in the bushfire, the wife who has left us, the child who has died. It takes months and more commonly, years before we dig down deeper through our despair and grief to discover that what we really want (our deepest desire), is life, a good life, or a life which is whole again – with our without the thing we have lost, because to have this ‘life’ is one of freedom from the pain, despair and the past which will no longer have control over us. The director is one who sits alongside nurturing, waiting, living in the hope that given time, they will discover this treasure hidden in the field, their lived life.