How to Make Holy Week Holy

Here are seven simple ideas that might just help – whether you are alone, part of a church community which is marking the week together, or among people for whom nothing is holy.

Good Friday 2009 (Photo credit: Lawrence OP)

Shut down some sources of information. 

For much of our lives we are overwhelmed by messages and news. Screen some of them out for a week.  Give your mind chance to rest on things that last, things that really matter.

Listen to silence.

True silence is very hard to come by, but listening more intently for it will impact on you profoundly.

Look at darkness.

Don’t try to understand it. Just try to look deeply into that which has no colour, no meaning, no purpose, no life. Do not be afraid. Light will come.

Soak up the story.

Don’t take it apart. Don’t compare and contrast. Just read it, hear it, recite it, perform it or tell it.  Let the story do its good work.

Use your sense of smell.

It is strongly connected to memory but also to your soul. What does Good Friday smell like? What is the aroma of Easter Day?

Slow yourself down.

Holy Week happens in real time.  Synchronise your personal clock with God’s cosmic clock and slow to God’s more patient pace.

Behold the wood of the cross.

This is a phrase from the ancient liturgy of Good Friday. Prepare for it by noticing wood wherever you find it. Touch trees. Feel polished wood. Make a cross of wood or carry a holding cross.  Get close to wood and let the wood connect you with the saviour of the world.

May this holy week bring many blessings for a world in desperate need of reconciling love.

Read Full Post »

Faith and Forgiveness

I was challenged today to say whether forgiveness is only possible for a person of faith.

It was in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (or Oxford Cathedral, Christ Church) where three of us were discussing ‘The Question of Forgiveness’ as part of the Oxford Literary Festival.

We were talking about serious, extreme and difficult forgiveness. The sort of forgiveness that emerges only after a violation so shattering that forgiveness seems utterly impossible. Situations where the mere mention of the word might cause deep offence.

Is faith necessary to extreme forgiveness?

It was a challenge to answer. For some people faith might make all the difference. Faith suggests a trust is a transcendent good – God – and this belief has often helped people forward. But it also seemed to me that faith in a punitive and vengeful god might call from a victim the opposite of forgiveness. So it could go either way.

What I did feel was necessary for forgiveness was hope. The sort of hope that there will be light at the end of the tunnel even when there is no light at the end of the tunnel and a deep darkness pervades. I suggested that it is the sort of faith that generates hope which helps people to forgive.

However, the most important part of my reflection was that faith and hope are secondary matters here. It is God who matters for forgiveness. And God’s action is not limited, thank God, to the faithful mind or the hopeful heart.

In my book ‘Healing Agony’ I refer somewhere to the ‘flow of spirit’. It is this which is vital for forgiveness. There is no forgiveness where there is no spiritual flow. Where things are frozen or fixed, petrified or permanent, forgiveness is not even going to begin. But where the is flow of spirit, some movement of grace, then forgiveness has a chance.

Forgiveness is the triumph of grace in broken human affairs. But it is a strange triumph. It is both an ‘overcoming of’ and ‘entering into’ the pain of the violation. It is both a ‘freeing from’ and a ‘connecting with’ the perpetrator, it is both the creation of a strong and free ‘me’ and the blending of that me into a new ‘we’.

The negatives matter too. Forgiveness is not setting the clock back. It is not rubbing out the past. It is not the erasure of memory. It is no guarantee of how you might feel tomorrow. But it is a movement to a new quality of wholeness and freedom.

Is faith necessary? I am not sure.

But I am sure that when people face the horror and desolation of shattering harm with resolute hope it liberates a flow of spirit and creates a new occasion for the triumph of grace.

God is at work in true forgiveness. And God does not wait on our faith, but on our need.

Is faith necessary for forgiveness? No. But God is. And when we forgive, as we become forgiving, we move into God’s space.

It is very mysterious, this forgiveness, and we rarely find the words for it. But when we are in the company of forgiving people we are on holy ground.

And when we hear their stories we hear the poetry of the wounded soul. The soul that is being healed and which offers healing to others.

Read Full Post »

On Losing an Icon – Reflections on Rowan’s Resignation

Last night someone reminded me, via a post on my Facebook wall, that I had told him years ago that one of the great things about Rowan as a teacher was that he could say more in a few words than most could say in many. I had said that the only way to take notes in his lectures was to write more than he said. That person leads the King’s Church in the town where I used to live. Hardly an episcopal fan club. But he, like many, was feeling a strange loss. Me too. It will take a long time to figure it out. But here are two thoughts. One about Rowan as priest and the other about Rowan as archbishop.

Perhaps Rowan’s most typical book is one called ‘Lost Icons’. In the introduction he says he wrote it as a priest. And he did. And it is Rowan the priest who is perhaps the most powerful personality in his complex character. And that priest is itself an icon. (Whether ordained or not is in my view at least a secondary matter here.)

Let me explain. A priest is not an image but a lens. The point is not to ‘look at’ but to ‘see through’. Priests are not meant to be celebrities. Icons are not meant to be attractive. In the book Rowan calls them (if I remember rightly, I do not have a copy to hand) ‘grotesqueries’. They do not make sense on their own. They do not even point the way. What they do is invite you to imagine a focal point beyond them. This is Rowan’s way. It is what priests are for. To remind us that what appears to be surface is by no means all there is. True icons invite us to depth and transcendence. And so do true priests.

People grumble that Rowan thought and spoke in metaphors. But it simply comes with the territory in the church. Bishops are less leaders than bridges, they are not the pillars of the church, they are the arches that join them. Now it is hardly the fault of the arch if the pillars start to move way from each other or if an earthquake forces them apart. But the bridge is still a bridge, the arch still the arch. It is pulled out of shape but it is not the role of the arch to become the pillar. Nor is there any point in complaining of an arch that it does not have its feet on the ground. In any structure which inspires the arches are lofty. It is their vocation.

What I think that this means is that the role of a bishop or archbishop in times of rapid change is inevitably going to be problematic and painful. But that’s just the reality. The meaning is far more interesting and important. And the meaning only comes clear when the archbishop or bishop is also a true priest and true icon. One through whom we see the face of Christ and, on a very good day, the glory of God.

We are losing one icon. God help us find another.

Read Full Post »

Amazon Blues

One of the more shameful things you can do as an author is look your book up on Amazon to see how well it is selling.  As the ratings change every hour you can waste a lot of time like that.

If the book is doing well it is good fun.  You see it rising from the hundred thousands to a five figure number. You begin to wonder, maybe it will get into the top 10,000. It does. Will it do better? Yes, inside the top 5,000. Then one day, Amazon mentions it in a promotion and it breaks into three figures.  We are cooking on gas now. There’s only Jamie Oliver between us and the very top. Well, Jamie and about a thousand other books. That’s quite a lot, actually.

It is very childish, of course.  I have no idea how Amazon’s algorithm works and it was only after a while that I realized that just a few sales could lead to very significant changes.  And those sales might well be of other books.

Someone told me that the number of ‘likes’ makes a difference too. Which is good if you want to be kind but don’t want to bother reading it.  The other day a student told me she liked my first book. I was astonished. ‘You’ve read it?’ I asked. ‘I read the back cover’ she replied. ‘It was nice.’ Fair enough. A like is a like.

With two books published there is even more juvenile fun to be had. It’s a race. Which book is in the lead?  One day I looked them up to find they were only a few places apart – one was 9,248 and the other 9,254. Neck and neck. I wanted to photograph the moment. An hour later they had moved apart. Don’t ask me how I know.

Both have tumbled down over the last few days.  One was mentioned in the Church Times as a ‘recently published’ book last Friday, It was around 5,000 then. Now, less than a week later, it is ranked 144,559.  And, no thank you, Mr Amazon, I will not take the trouble to look up the top 100 books right now. I am not quite in the mood.

This is innocent sport, of course.  But there are is a real danger lurking. A new review could pop up any moment.

In fact, one just has. I must be getting old as it made me laugh out loud. It’s short enough to tweet:  ‘An interesting little book, a bit disjointed, but makes better sense reading it for the second time. It was very thought provoking especially during lent (sic).’

It was for Barefoot Disciple. Healing Agony has not been reviewed yet. Though you never know…Maybe I had better check.

I am not sure about Amazon reviews. You just don’t know who the reviewer is. But you can work out a few things by looking at their other reviews.  So I looked ‘jrc’ up.

There were six other reviews, all as succinct.  Two were for Bibles, (‘this is a neat bible, although the print is a bit small’.)  One was for Majestic Rainbow Bible Tabs (‘these bible tabs are so useful. they help finding the books of the bible so much quicker. They are a bit fiddly to put on but still useful.)

And one was for a ladies watch strap. (‘I am a bit disappointed, a good price, a lovely colour, and a nice looking watch strap, but no spring loaded pins included to fit watchstrap to watch. SO had to buy them as well.’)

Reviewers also award stars.  jrc had given several five-star reviews. The watch strap minus pins only got three stars – which for some illogical reason made me feel better about getting four for my disjointed ramblings. The neat Bible only got two. Even more disjointed, perhaps.

Must stop. It’s time to check the rankings.

Barefoot Disciple: Walking the Way of Passionate Humility: Walking the Way of Passionate Humility – The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2011

Healing Agony: Re-Imagining Forgiveness

But why not be radical and shop in a real bookshop, say the Durham Cathedral Shop. There is no fear of stumbling across a ranking or review in there. Check it out at  http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/visiting/attractions Nice staff too.

 

Read Full Post »