Introducing spirituality
At present I am working my way through an evening series at church on the ‘spiritual toolkit’. I have already blogged on here about sessions involving ‘telling your story’ and ‘maintaining fellowship’. Last night the subject was ‘exploring spirituality’. For many in an evangelical Baptist setting such as my own, that is an alien concept in itself. We seek to find God in the Word, serve him in the world and worship him in the church but ‘spirituality’ is not really in our vocabulary. Spirituality, though, is nothing to do with churchmanship. Rather, it expresses a longing after God in many forms. I decided to look at just four aspects of the many on offer…
The Nun (English mysticism)
I was introduced to Julian of Norwich during my first year of a theology degree in a course on arguments for the existence of God. This woman, who chose to be walled up in a cell adjoining her church, with her intense visions of God, was about as far off my spiritual radar as it was possible to get. Her Revelations of Divine Love, though, teach a spiritual lesson about leaning into the skid of suffering and seeing where God is to be found. On what she thought was her death bed, Julian had visions of an unbelievable intensity about the passion of Christ. Meanwhile, the unknown author of Cloud of the Unknowing was urging people to meditate purely and simply on the word ‘God’ with a degree of concentration alien to our butterfly brains. There are lessons to be learnt here…
The Soldier (Ignatian spirituality)
A Spanish soldier-turned priest is not a natural companion for a Baptist minister. However, when a senior minister saw me growing ragged and recommended I meet with a spiritual director, it led to a meeting with an Ignatian practitioner. Ignatius Loyola brought all the discipline of his soldiering into his priesthood. He recommended the Examen – a way of reviewing the day under God and learning from it, as a daily spiritual exercise. Those who wished to take it further could assign themselves to a spiritual director to undergo a longer period of ‘training’. In a world where we pay gym fees to tone our muscles, a rigorous approach to growing spiritually might not go amiss.
The Gnomes (Celtic spirituality)
I am no stranger to Celtic spirituality. I sing many hymns and songs inspired by it, and a Celtic cross presented to me on my ordination day sits in front of my desk. Anyone who has ever worn an aran sweater has worn in the stitches across their body a woven story of holistic, earth-integrated, Celtic spirituality. That said, the description of a ‘tree of life’ worn on an aran sweater, would not sound out of place in the Disney world of Pocahontas or on Avatar’s moon Pandora. When I was researching the meaning of Paul’s reference to the ‘dominions and powers’ in Ephesians 1 I came across a whole new dimension to it, though. Just as Paul was alluding to both visible and invisible powers, so does Celtic theology. It represents an old, old relationship with the created order but also with pre-Christian understandings of it which still linger on. Thus a midwife’s prayer from the Hebrides can pray for the blessing of the Holy Spirit on the new child, but also for protection from the ‘gnomes’. In a world of ‘blended spirituality’ where people yearn for a relationship with the earth as well as the one who made it, this may have much to offer.
The Mouse (New Monasticism)
Writing to his brother in 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer looked ahead to the church after Naziism was defeated and said that it would need ‘a new typeof monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. Last Summer, turning my face away from pleasant thoughts of sabbatical and pilgrimage to established local ministry again, I looked at what this has to offer. The contemporary new monastic movement seeks to draw on the spiritual understandings of gathered religious communities whilst recognising that we live scattered lives. Many of those who join the new monastic orders will help each other to adhere to : a rule of life, a rhythm of prayer and soul friendship at the click of a mouse by sending emails or skyping. Simon Reed, in his book Ancient ways for modern churches, describes this as an approach which ‘seeks to be in touch with the scriptures and the Spirit, the saints and the streets, the seasons and the soil’. This has something to offer homo connectivus, surely?
The number of conversations following this service would suggest that it has piqued an interest in it. (Please note that all links lead to further resources)
