The Contemplative Crisis

Throughout Lent I’ve been writing a series of Bible studies which follow the Psalms that are used during this period of the year. These have been used by the home groups which are part of the congregation I am a minister in. The following is an introduction to the Psalm set for this Sunday, Psalm 119.

What would you consider to be the greatest achievement or success for the United States of America? For me, I would nominate sending the first men to the moon and back again. What about the greatest achievement for Australia? I don’t think it would be the haul of gold medals at the Sydney Olympics of 2000. Our greatest achievement is found in our political life. We have had a stable democracy for over 160 years from the Eureka Stockade in Victoria, through the establishment of the federal parliament and the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 to today’s minority government. We have not descended into civil war, unlike what has occurred in the USA, France or the UK, such is the ability and robustness of our political system to represent divergent views and competing opinions. Our political life is a carefully balanced blend of a liberal, capitalist society with the expectation of social policies which are egalitarian. What then would you consider the finest achievement for the Israelites? I think it would be the composition of this psalm, Psalm 119.

For the Israelites, their success was not measured in impressive buildings or philosophy or by expanding their borders and conquering other nations through war. Some civilizations like the ancient Greeks, achieved all three. Success for Judaism was to be found in the area of culture and more specifically, literature and writing. They have been and continue to remain, a people of the Book, a characteristic which can be extended to the other two Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam. For the Israelites, God’s word has been expressed and recorded for posterity in the words of the Prophets, the Holy Writings and the Law of Moses. This gave rise to a high level of literacy in their society as it was expected that the men (sorry ladies), were expected to both know and be able to read Scripture in public worship. We see this in the way even a carpenter’s son, Jesus, was expected to be able to read in public  (Luke 4:16-17).

The achievement of Israel’s rich body of literature is due to one simple reason. Their literature preserved God’s word so that they might worship him correctly and ‘walk in his ways’. The study of God’s word was always focused on this practical end: how do we live with God and honour him in our daily life? God’s word would tell them what God’s requirements were if they were to enjoy the sweet fellowship they had tasted and longed for. Book learning, in part for its association with God’s word and worship, has always been celebrated, revered and cherished in God’s people, the Jews.

In contrast, book learning was not cherished in the wider Australian society as I grew up. People who were considered ‘bookish’, along with abstract learning, were regarded by others with suspicion. (Their knowledge would often be dismissed as being ‘academic’.) The emphasis in Australian society has generally been on being practical (’handy with one’s hands’) and possessing practical knowledge of a ‘how to’ kind. A good reason for this value on practical knowledge is due to the sheer physical demand of carving out and establishing farms from marginal land. It has also been the Australian experience (aspiration?) to build your own house but because there has been a shortage of skilled labour or because this labour has been too expensive to use, the owner-builder with their practical knowledge has been quite common. An additional reason has been a spirit of self- reliance by those living in the country and also by those who have come from overseas or who moved interstate without the support of their extended family.  This negative attitude toward book learning and serious study has unfortunately also crept into the Church in some circles of Christianity.

I would like to think that this Psalm (Ps 119) challenges our assumptions about the place of learning in general, and God’s word in particular. It crystalizes why learning to read and write has been so important to Judaism, but also for Christians. It also answers the question of why both Jews and Christians, have devoted the time and money to the reproduction of the Bible for God’s people. Without this book, Jewish culture and even its society was in jeopardy of fragmentation or destruction from outside influences (See 2 Kings 22:3- 23:25; Ezra 10:1-3). The same can be said of Christianity. No Bible, no meditation on its contents, no careful study of it and no teaching of it, and we also face extinction, to say nothing of offending God and incurring his wrath and loss of blessing.

For the first time in my life, I think I might have experienced what it is like (to some small degree) to be an Aborigine. What I am referring to is an active discrimination by a section in our society which ridicules my faith, claims that it is only mythology and that it has no place in our Australian society. This is what white people have done for nearly two hundred years with Aborigines. I do not want for a moment, detract or minimise the discrimination, racism and hate which Aborigines have received by various governments, their agents and by the general ‘white’ population, but I sense that their experience is increasingly becoming my experience as a Christian.  And like the experience of Aborigines, we Christians are now being pushed to the margins of society by a campaign which seeks to disenfranchise us from public life by a small and vocal group of atheists who want an entirely secular school system.  Just as Aborigines had their land stolen and were denied justice when they complained that they needed this land as a location in which to practice their religion, now the same is occurring to Christians who offer Christian religious education under the provisions of the Education Act of Victoria which allows Special Religious Instruction. What has been our right to practice our faith by teaching it in schools for approximately a hundred years, is now in all likelihood, to be stolen by a vociferous elite. If we complain or object, we are told to go away and be silent, with the reassuring gesture by these elites, that of course, they are not denying us our right to practice our faith; it must now be done in private.

In an analogous way to what has happened to Aborigines, I find the same regularly occurring in the daily newspapers when self-appointed spokespeople (often led by the Age education reporter, Jewel Topsfield), argue that our religious faith and its tenets have no place being taught in the primary schools as Special Religious Instruction. The most recent article on Friday 2 March in the Age by Stan Van Hooft, professor of philosophy at Deakin University, highlights the campaign for what it is – discrimination by one elite within our society against another with the aim of reducing or removing their legal rights. This is being done by using a variety of methods which when examined, are misleading, false, deeply offensive (to Christians) and designed to cause hurt in the Christian community.

It was no mere coincidence that the particular article in Prof Van Hooft was published the day after the article by Jewel Topsfield which drew attention to the complaint currently before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) by three parents who claim that their children were discriminated against when they, the parents’, opted out of the special religious instruction program offered in their primary school. The frequent reporting of the case throughout the latter part of 2011 and the issues it raises are in the public interest, but it is the concerted and distorted campaign by the Age which merits comment, particularly when an article by Prof Stan Van Hooft appears to give good reasons for Christian education to be removed from our primary schools.

Although Stan Van Hooft is a professor of philosophy, he shows sloppy scholarship and even lapses into a non sequitur on occasion in his attempt to disparage Christians. Furthermore, he uses the old argument of guilt by association to suggest that Christians believe in a set of myths and for this reason, their beliefs should treated with disdain.  Let me explain. He claims that ‘Australia is a society that guarantees freedom of religion and separation of church and state.’ This claim is made, without any evidence or citation of his source. At first glance, it seems plausible. But which government? State or federal? The federal government does not and is not able to guarantee the freedom of religion because it is not enabled under the constitution to enact such legislation. What the state government does under the provisions of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 is provide definitions of what constitutes a breach of respecting another person’s religion and what constitutes vilification. And as for their being a ‘separation of church and state’, there are no legal provisions or conventions. Quite the opposite in fact occurs. Both federal and state governments provide funding to religious based groups, tax concessions and permit chaplains in high schools, hospitals, universities and the armed forces to offer pastoral care and a spiritual perspective on life. Each state government varies in its relationship with church bodies and institutions according to the political climate of the day.

I assume that this unjustified claim by Prof Van Hooft is cited in order to suggest that Christians, and in particular, ACCESS Ministries are not acting in accordance with his hypothetical and misleading understanding of the separation of church and state.  Then there is the matter of what exactly does he understand ‘freedom of religion’ to mean? Does he mean freedom to practice one’s religion without interference from others, including the government, or freedom from the activity by religious groups promoting their particular faith or beliefs? His offhand citation is so ambiguous in its meaning that I assume given the context that he is writing against ACCESS Ministries that he was thinking of the latter: freedom from religious groups promoting their tenets.

Then Prof Van Hooft makes his non sequitur. He writes: “It is a liberal society in which everyone is entitled to the religious beliefs they hold and to follow their religious practices as long as they cause no harm. This means religion is a private matter.” Even if I accept his statement that this is a liberal society, it is a huge leap to then conclude that the practice of one’s religion is a private matter. The truth of this assertion does not follow from the preceding facts (hence the non sequitur). One may practise our religious faith and do no harm, but it does not follow that they must do so in private. Often, the public expression and practice of one’s religious faith is axiomatic to the very nature of a religion. For many adherents, if their religion is to be practiced, it must affect all of one’s life and for certain faiths in particular, such as Islam and Christianity, their religious faith must be expressed in public life. However, when the ruling elite or political and social hegemony is challenged by Christians, as it is by ACCESS Ministries,  then this call is made viz: that it can only be practiced in private.  A historical example of this was the demand by the Nazi regime of Germany that Christians were free to practice their religion providing that their beliefs and practices were subsumed under the Nazi claims to define what was acceptable and that they were practiced in private.

Van Hooft goes onto say: “Private matters are those that touch on the consciences or lifestyles of individuals which those individuals are entitled to pursue because they have no public impact.” Here the blatant hegemony is exposed by this educational elite. He wishes to circumscribe issues of conscience or lifestyle to the purely private sphere – but the question must be raised: on what basis? Who says? Why? This is a deft piece of sophistry by the professor which must be exposed for what it is: the denial of the individual in a society to hold to an ethic or religious conviction which may affect the wider society. It is the denial of the individual to assert, what to their conscience is in the public interest. This is apparent when he goes on shortly to say: “Schools set up by a liberal state and pursuing public good should not be intruded upon by the private convictions of any groups within society.” Let’s for example, compare this statement with what happens in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and to some degree, the United Kingdom, countries I am sure the professor would agree, have ‘liberal’ societies and governments. These countries see no problem or incompatibility between pursuing the public good in a liberal society by allowing the intrusion of the private convictions of a group into the schooling system, government and political life in the form of the Lutheran Church and Church of England. The reality is that there will always be the intrusion by the convictions of groups within our society into our schools and individuals motivated by their private conscience. He himself is his own example of an individual exercising his private conscience to determine or influence the public schooling system, but then he has the audacity to claim the higher ground and deny this right to others who differ from him. The professor’s problem is that he doesn’t like people of faith particularly Christians and he does not seem aware that it is an impossibility to have the schooling system left free from or devoid of any influence by a group of people.

Then the professor argues for general religious education to be taught in place of Special Religious Instruction. However, it is left unsaid who will teach this curriculum. One assumes it is to be delivered by the classroom teacher, even if they are neither competent to teach it nor willing to teach it due to their own individual conscience, which is informed by their religious beliefs and philosophical standpoint.  In other words, he assumes that classroom teachers will be committed to this policy and committed to the teaching of religious pluralism, even if it contravenes their personal beliefs. But leaving the apparent conflict which emerges between the reality of the teacher being asked to teach something they do not believe in and his earlier statement that private conscience is to have no place in public life, he then moves on to an argument that Christianity is based on a mere myth by the old method of guilt by association.

Here he writes: “Indeed, children may come to see that such beliefs  [“that Jesus rose from the dead, but that others believe that the Prophet was carried bodily by angels from Mecca to Jerusalem . . .”] are about as credible as their belief in Santa Claus, in Superman and in their imaginary friends.” This is a cheap way to disparage another person’s cherished beliefs. He assumes both children and adults are unable to discern the difference between fantasy and religious assertions and beliefs. What would be said if he was to say the same about an Aborigine’s religious beliefs when in our society we recognise the importance and place of the Aboriginal religious beliefs and their central role to their culture and life? There would be complaints.  When Van Hooft writes: “Children do not have the capacity to critically assess the ideas that are presented to them.”, he highlights why general religious education should not be taught. Children are being exposed to religious pluralism without their parent’s permission or awareness. General religious education appears to be fair to all, but the philosophical belief in pluralism remains camouflaged. At least with a provider delivering explicit religious education, children and parents are aware of what is being taught. Under general religious education it is by no means explicit or certain what is being taught.  Furthermore, if a general religious education is to be taught, it might be modelled on the UK program, which explicitly acknowledges the place of religious faith in society and the validity of religious faith to be part of the national curriculum.  This stance in the UK is quite different from the negative of Prof Van Hooft.

If Prof Adrian Van Hooft wishes to see the maintenance of a truly liberal society where a diversity of views are promoted and learnt, then the position which is provided under the Education Act of Victoria to allow special religious instruction should be promoted by him to encourage other religious groups to participate. Other religious groups currently provide special religious instruction; the problem is one of money, volunteers and organisation that limit their ability to teach their religious beliefs.  ACCESS ministries is able to do all three because it represents and is funded by Christians who represent the majority religious group in our society. As unpalatable this fact might be, this is the situation.  For parents like myself who are Christians and value government funded public schools and who pay our taxes, we see no reason why our faith should be marginalised, ridiculed and left at the gate of the school and our children denied the opportunity to learn about our religious tradition which occupies an important role in our wider society.

This article in the Age on Friday highlighted to me, the over-reaching claims now being made by the atheists in order to move Christians out of the schools and to the margins of public life.  Through their arguments, they are attempting to marginalise Christians and in particular, their influence and contribution in public life, even though the Christian faith has both renewed and reformed our society in the past.  In many respects, the very same arguments have been in past made to disparage the religious beliefs and practices of Aborigines and like the Aborigines, Christians will not be silent.

I am thinking of adopting the phrase ‘to travel light’ as a statement to guide me for the year ahead. This comes from my recent holiday at the beach. I decided not to take everything to cover every possible contingency, which I would normally do. I thought, I’m taking enough stuff already. Why not try to do with less? As it turns out, I decided not to take my anti-inflammatory drugs. I considered it as I put my essential tablets in my toilet bag, but I was, after all, only going for four days. I was not going to be doing anything strenuous which would stir up my recurring lower back pain. On the morning after my first night’s sleep at the holiday house, I woke up, felt good, until that is, I tried to get out of bed. My back had ‘gone’. I was in quite a bit of pain. I don’t know what triggered it this time. So here I was, miles from home, in need of my anti-inflammatories and no doctor around to prescribe more. But I survived with rub downs and the swimming in the cold sea water was excellent. The first thing I did on returning home was to go straight to the bathroom and find that missing anti-inflammatory drug.

Another reason for my consideration about ‘travelling light’. There was a recent radio program which has highlighted the dangerous working conditions for the people who work on assembling the Apple iPhones. (I first heard about it on a radio program here which was replayed on Radio National (Australia) on 25 January. Many workers have died; they are frequently exhausted from shifts of 12 to 16 hours; the chemical used to clean the screens is carcinogenic and occasionally, there are under age workers. It is not uncommon for a worker to suffer from repetitive strain injuries because they do not circulate the workers through different tasks. When their bodies are injured, they simply sack them.(Here)  (See here) (And here)That got me thinking. Do I need such a device? Do I really need the latest one? Why not wait until my existing mobile phone dies before I upgrade? And do I need to acquire an Apple product?

Yet another reason for travelling light. Every fortnight I take a huge bin out filled to the top with our recyclable materials (It’s 240 litres in size.) Bottles, glass, plastics, paper and cardboard are all put in the bin. In a year, that is twenty five of these bins. And almost every house along the street puts out the same amount of rubbish for recycling. Who pays for this stuff? I do each time I purchase a product. The cost of the can, the bottle, the polystyrofoam plate is included in the cost of the product. The daily newspaper is obviously paid for by me too with only the junk mail being free. So in effect, I am throwing away perhaps $500 or a $1000 a year in packaging and used newspapers. It would be difficult to live without the convenience and safety of the steel can which keeps our food fresh and free from spoiling. But do I need to purchase all the stuff which occupies our consumerist culture here in the West? Several years ago, it seems like everyone upgraded their televisions to humungous flat screen ones. This might have been prompted by the Olympic Games or the World Cup Soccer. The evidence has been seen on the hard rubbish collection with what appears to be working CRT tube televisions being thrown out by literally every house in the street.

Making do has disappeared. I actually found it enjoyable using my imagination to cover the shortfall or missing item while on holidays. We had to borrow a can opener which opened up a conversation and relationship with the neighbouring camper. At the holiday house I needed to bake a cake, but there was no electric beaters and no cake tray, so I had to make do with using those things at the end of your arms (ie: your hands), a spoon and a  thinner, wider tray which worked ok.  My camera has also needed a smaller wrist strap. I’ve tried various sorts and none have been satisfactory, but I spied the thin rope handles of a (trendy) paper bag used by a clothing store. I cut one off, looped it through the camera’s ring tied a reef knot in it and its worked fine. Cost: nothing.

Where is trusting in God to supply our daily needs when we want to cover every possible contingency – a luxury we enjoy only in the West? So I’m in the mood for simplifying, slimming down things, commitments and what I’ll take. De-cluttering is also part of it, but that will remain a topic for another occasion.

I’ve been away from the blog for two months. During December I was busy and had a week of holidays in Adelaide. After the busyness of Christmas, I was away for several weeks again, but this time it was two different locations of the Victorian coast. This post is dedicated to the author of the blog Metanoia, Robin who has been on a long and often difficult journey in recent years.

When people come to us as spiritual directors, they do so from any number of places. Some arrive broken by life’s events. Some will come trailing their sins behind them, seeking desperately for healing, someone or something who will relieve their shame. Others are well, but seek God and want to go further, deeper. Some are ‘stuck’ in a hard place and others, want answers and want to discern what choices they need to make.  The temptation for the director when a person comes to us in the depths of despair is to shift from offering spiritual direction to offering pastoral care, particularly when pastoral care is understood to be one of healing, sustaining and guiding. (Angela H. Reed, Quest For Spiritual Reality (London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 20. It should be noted that although Angela Reed offers this summary of the main tasks of pastoral care, she later criticises the pastoral care and counselling movement. See Reed, p. 56, note 9.)

A common and quite human response, is to want to help the person to be relieved of the unhappy feelings they are experiencing. But this is not a commonly understood aim of spiritual direction. It is to listen with them to see where God is at work in the midst of their despair. Another goal might be to sustain them as they seek to find God and meaning within their personal disaster. In fact, by making some tentative goal of what we practice explicit, whether it is pastoral care or spiritual direction, we also clarify the differences which exist between them.  It might also be said  that offering spiritual direction is good pastoral care! Although the person requires deep compassionate listening to, spiritual direction is focused on God as the key to all meaning and life itself; whereas pastoral care is more often focused on relieving feelings and helping the person to cope.

This morning an older woman has come to see you named Naomi. Deeply etched lines on her face betray the hard life she has lived and the many disappointments in her life. She is not as well-known as her daughter in law Ruth, and this is entirely understandable given that Ruth is remembered for three outstanding reasons: she is the great-grandmother of king David, the greatest king in Israel’s history and that despite being from the nation of Moab, a people despised by God and Israel (Deut 23:3; Nu 25:1ff), she was accepted into the royal lineage (Matt 1:5).  And of course, there is her wonderful faith and character which shines between the verses of sacred Scripture, which surprises the editor of the book which bears her name as much as the men of Bethlehem who commonly refer to her ‘the Moabitess’ (1:22, 2:2, 2:6, 2:21; 4:5; 4:10).

As Naomi takes her seat, you notice her  face looks vaguely familiar:  it is the face of the woman we see on the television news following the floods in Queensland, the anguished woman’s face following the earthquake in Iran, the wailing woman on a  Cairo street whose son lies dead following the recent protests against the government. After Naomi has sat down, straightened her dress and cast a few furtive glances around the room to get her bearings, she tells you her story. It is relatively straightforward.  Due to famine she left the home of her upbringing, her ancestors homeland and with her husband and two sons, travelled to another land.  Then her husband died and her sons married Moabite women (a shameful thing). Each son then died leaving her destitute and vulnerable and without men in her life to protect her from to exploitation or attack (Ruth 1:1-6).  Due to a rumour that the famine has ended back home, she leaves with only her daughter in law Ruth joining her. On her arrival in Bethlehem, the townspeople are surprised to see her again – that she is still alive and looking so deeply affected by her trials (1:19).  At this point you have been following the story from one point to another relatively easily. But then she makes her confession to you of how she views the tragic events in her life. God has been dealing with her bitterly she tells you. It is God who has taken everything away from her that she considered precious and now she has returned empty. Due to these events, which she believes God has dealt her, she now wants to change her name to Mara, meaning ‘bitter’ (1:20-21).

What response do we make to her ‘creed’ which presents a distorted and a self-enclosed world where God is to blame? The narrator of the of Biblical text offers some clues at this point. He or she has carefully crafted the story by opening it in 1:1 with the solemn news that there is famine, but in the last verse of the chapter, that Naomi and Ruth arrive just as there is harvest (1:22). Below the tragic events in her life, God has been at work. How do we accompany someone who is unable to see the whole story? What questions will we ask? Where is grace seen and God’s care experienced in these events? What Naomi is currently unable to see through the tears of grief and disappointment is that God is present and at work within her life and the tragic events which have unfolded. Where will we sit in relationship to her in this hard place? Of course, we tell ourselves, we would not sit in a place above her, the all knowing professional, but alongside her. But have we sat in her world? What would you like said to you by your spiritual director if you were that woman on the television news with your son now lying dead in the street?

I suspect that it will take more than one quick trip to the spiritual director before Naomi has moved on from this place of despair. From the personal experience of accompanying someone in depression and who had lost much (which contributed to the depression), it was sitting with them, time after time over several years before there was any sense of movement; any sense of hope or that God might be there in what had happened. Even if there was some tentative movement, the next time we met, I would find we would be back where we started from. Often my friend could not mentally take in a theological truth; they had to find it for themselves as we painfully picked through their story and experience which had engulfed them, leaving them without hope and faith. It was not I, but God’s patience working within me that allowed me to stay with them, month after month, until several years had slipped by.

It is the story behind the story or the story which lies beneath the story which is told that I now listen for. Sometimes it completely eludes me; on other occasions I must try and postpone my excitement or check the certainty that I know in order to allow the sacred space for God’s Spirit to continue his work.  Is there a deeper story which Naomi must tell? What would you say to her in response to her confession of faith in 1:20-21 and perhaps most importantly, when would you say anything? One of our roles as spiritual directors is to support those as they undertake the most demanding and dangerous journey in their lives. It is a solemn trust given to us and a privileged place to listen to the heart of someone else. It has frequently taken me to places I daren’t not go myself, because I felt vulnerable in becoming aware of the issues which might overtake me on my journey. Yet we must be honest and answer the call by God and sit with the Naomi’s who are brought across our paths and resist the temptation to “fix”, or to be the pastor when our calling is primarily to be the spiritual guide, accompanying those as they make their way home to where their hearts can find solace and reconciliation with God, life’s events and possibly themselves. As the narrator of Naomi’s story obliquely hints, it is a graced journey that this woman has undertaken (4:14-16).

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.