JM 2015 April
Article
Gerard Hughes
Cry of Wonder (extract from part 3)
The reason for being still and silent in prayer is to enable us to become more consciously in touch with God, who is always greater than anything we can think or imagine but who is constantly within us and around us, the God of every pulse beat, communicating with us through every breath we breathe, God present in every one of the trillions of cells in our bodies with their miraculous transport and communication systems, which enable us to transform what we eat and drink to become our developing bodies, to think, reflect, react to the surroundings and, especially, teach us how to relate to each other and so find God.
‘Be still’ is a teaching in all major world religions and among many people who profess to have no religion. I do not believe that prayer is only possible for us if we follow certain rules given by religious authorities. I believe God is in all things. I believe that in stillness exercises, I am becoming more aware of the reality of God listening to me and so enabling me to let the Spirit of God pray through me. Prayer is about letting God be God to us and through us in every detail of our lives. Prayer is about attitude, not particular actions. Formal prayer, as in doing a stillness exercise, is a means of enabling us to live this attitude in the way we are in the world. God is there all the time, delighting in our being. Exercises in being still are not a luxury for the leisured classes. they are essential in human life. There is no situation, however apparently chaotic, in which being still cannot be practised in some form.
How am I to pray? The way you find most helpful at present. Your way of praying will vary over time. What was helpful in childhood may not be helpful in adolescence. Middle age prayer is unlikely to be the same in old age, but there are some general signs which indicate a healthy development. The signs are in our way of living, our way of perceiving, our way of reacting to crises and traumas, to rejection and accusation, to wealth and poverty, honour and insult, success and failure.
Prayer is a way of being, not a specialised activity for the chosen few. Prayer, as it develops, becomes simpler, quieter, less wordy, more childlike. These are not changes that we devise, we discover they are happening. If we think of prayer as something we perform and offer to a distant God, then it is impossible because we are already living in God. The Spirit who lived in Jesus and raised him from the dead now lives in us and prays in us. We are never alone. We may be totally unaware of this presence in our conscious minds, but its presence is influencing all our decisions whether we are conscious of it or not. In prayer, whatever form it takes, we are begging to become aware of the reality in which we are being held.
So when you find the ‘why’ questions of life are knocking at the door of your consciousness, let them in, hold them before God and hear from deep within your being these words being said: ‘Don’t be afraid. I am with you’, and talk simply from your heart as your heart directs you.
Quotation
[anon]
Prayer is nothing but a friendly conversation with Him who, we know, loves us.
Poem
Steve Garnaas–Holmes
God called Abram
God called Abram to leave the familiar and go,
go on a road he would make by going,
to a place he would know by finding.
Jesus led Nicodemus to the threshold of a birth,
a newness he could only know
by going through it.
Only what’s left behind us, not ahead,
keeps us from going on, from entering
the impossible womb of starting new.
The stones of disappointment in your pockets,
the grave marker of the old life,
they can’t come with you.
The path is not a test. It’s our freedom.
Many a prisoner has looked into the tunnel,
the Beloved waiting in the light, and said no.
Where is the Spirit calling you, the wind blowing?
Where is the thin place between your habits
and a new birth?
These pangs, this heavy breathing:
the beloved is trying to birth you.
let it happen.
Article
Elizabeth Ruth Obbard
Praying with St Teresa of Avila – part 1
St Teresa was born in Spain in 1515, the third child of her father’s second marriage and one of a family of twelve. Her grandfather, Juan Sanchez, was a silk merchant of Toledo. He had been a Jew who was forcibly converted at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Teresa belonged to a fine, cultured household, rich and prosperous.
She was a gifted child, lively, intelligent and vivacious, the acknowledged favourite of her father. A brilliant marriage could have been predicted for this beautiful girl, but when she was 21 years old Teresa decided to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, at Avila. It was not, she said, because of any particular love for the religious life that she became a nun, but because she feared for her soul’s salvation. Marriage would hardly be an attractive option for such an independent-minded young woman, who had seen her mother worn out from constant child-bearing: she looked like an elderly matron although only in her early thirties when she died.
In the book of her Life Teresa admits disarmingly that she chose the Carmelites because she had a friend there, and the life was not too strict. It is possible that her Jewish ancestry inclined her to a way of life that had originated in the East and made much of the prophet Elijah. Legends attributed the foundation of the Order to him, and its supposed history encompassed the eras of both the Old and the New Testaments.
Carmel is basically an Order dedicated to prayer, and Teresa tried to take her obligations in this area seriously. But life in the convent she joined did not support her strivings. In middle age a conversion experience as she contemplated an image of the wounded Christ at the pillar, changed her life. Henceforth she determined to live as she had vowed, and to introduce others to the paths of prayer which she saw as the only way to grow in holiness.
Teresa began founding convents of both men and women where the original Rule of Carmel would be followed, and where time given to prayer was the lynchpin of the day. She built on her own personal experience, and her engaging personality attracted many followers who looked to her for some teaching that would help them to find intimacy with God, as she had found it.
Teresa was a naturally relational person to whom friendship was all-important, so she based her instructions about prayer on its being a way of deepening one’s friendship with Christ. Christ was the friend par excellence. He was the centre of all Teresa said and all she taught. Unlike many others at that time in Spain, she firmly took her stand on Christ. Prayer could never take one beyond him into some nebulous element of ‘nothingness’. He was the Way to the Father as he himself had said. There was no other, no matter how far one advanced on the mystical path.
Mystically gifted herself, Teresa knew that introducing people to prayer was to introduce them to a way of life that touched every aspect of living and relating. A loving person is one who loves and serves others as proof of her love of God, not one who hides away in corners and wants to be protected from the nitty-gritty of life. Teresa had a fine sense of humour in this area and knew how to tease gently that ‘God walks among the pots and pans’ as much as in the church. Cooking the meals was as necessary for the good of the whole as staying silently in God’s presence. Aspects of both Martha and Mary should combine in a fully integrated life. And Teresa led the way by example here as elsewhere. No woman was as active and energetic as she, yet her action sprang from her union with God and was not an escape from it. She was active, but not an activist in the perjorative sense of the word.
In Teresa’s time many people were afraid of the word ‘contemplation’. She reassured those who were worried about this, that contemplation had nothing to do with extraordinary states. Contemplation could, and should, take place naturally if one only thought about what one was saying in such prayers as the Our Father or the Hail Mary. Vocal prayer and mental prayer were complimentary, and both could lead to deep contemplative union with God.
The young women who came to join Teresa’s convents wanted to know how to begin to pray. Once they had earnestly set out on the road to loving Christ, than the relationship could develop in its own unique way, just as any ordinary human relationship is unique.
As in all things, beginning is the most difficult part. In the paths of prayer one must start determined to go on, to give God time, no matter how one feels. Set aside some time each day and stick with it. Teresa as usual forestalls scrupulosity in this area by adding that if we have a headache, or feel unwell, we should instead take a quiet walk or do something relaxing. The important thing is to take up prayer once more as soon as possible. If, for some reason, we have neglected it over a period of time, then just start again. It is as simple as that!
Teresa herself had had to struggle for many years with an unruly mind. For more than 14 years she said that she never began to pray without having a book handy to collect her thoughts together. She knew that for many people prayer does not come easily, but it is possible if we give it a little effort and sustained work. After all, work is a form of love. To make an effort is a sign of goodwill, not of weakness.
Poem
JT
Letting Go
Starlight travelling to the world
from bodies long-since gone,
their brightness a benediction
traversing unimaginable distances
in time-space; gone yet present.
Changes in life’s circumstances
create a sense of loss, of mourning even,
yet like the transformed star
they become a gift of many layered brightness;
sensed for a while and then forgotten.
Each time-dependent act an infinitesimal building block,
in God’s designs and possibilities.
Article
Deidre Morris
Prayer and Your Mobile Phone
I rarely use a mobile phone, but many people cannot imagine a life where they can’t immediately be in touch with friends, family, Facebook, and the world wide web. They have, quite literally, everything to hand in their i-pad, or smart phone.
The more they use mobile phones etc., the less they seem to talk face to face. I sometimes wonder if God, wanting to give them a message, would send an e-mail instead of an angel. They’d probably notice the e-mail quicker than the angel ….
I’m not against modern communications. Being able to skype friends and family thousands of miles away, to talk to them and see them, is wonderful. But modern communications do have their dangers. They make me think about how we communicate with God, and why prayer opportunities like JM may be increasingly important.
The last words of Matthew’s gospel are Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matt. 28:20) In Isaiah 43:5 God says Do not be afraid, for I am with you.
God promises to be always with us. But it is up to us to keep in touch with him. A mobile phone is no use in an area where you cannot get a signal due to buildings, hills etc. The signal is still being sent but we are not in a position to receive it. We can put ourselves in to this situation with God. He is always there for us – but so often we don’t bother to try and pick up his signal and get in touch with him.
The one thing we don’t need to worry about is being out of reach of God. ‘Nothing can separate us from the Love of God’ (Eph. 5 7) for God’s presence is everywhere. But we do need to worry about putting ourselves in a position where we can’t connect with God, through our own fault. We can do this in various ways.
A mobile phone only works if it is switched on. Similarly, for us to be in touch with God we need to be switched on, and ready to go. One way we can be switched on and open to God, while in silent mode, is at a Julian Meeting.
Matthew 7:7 says Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.
The action promised by God only comes in response to our own action. We have to make the first move. We have to actively seek God, just as a mobile phone seeks the nearest signal. Mobile phones, digital radios and TVs home-in on the strongest signal they can find. I’m more familiar with radios you have to fiddle with the tuning dial for ages to get a clear signal between background interference and other channels. In pre-digital days I likened my efforts at contemplative prayer to doing just that, trying to tune in to God’s wavelength, and tune out all the interference that was getting in the way.
Not only must a mobile phone be switched on before it will work – it must have power to operate with. Batteries need to be re-charged regularly, plugged in to the mains. This is like us, as Christians. We need to plug in regularly to our source of power – God. We can do this in various ways – prayer, worship, Bible study. Without regular re-charging, we can become weak and ineffectual Christians. Our Julian Meetings are one way to recharge on a regular basis.
Devices like i-pads etc. can be used to re-charge spiritually. I’ve a friend whose arthritis makes reading her Bible quite difficult – if it has large enough print to read, it is too heavy for her to hold. So she downloaded it onto her i-pad, making it easier for her to hold. She can also enlarge the font, while the lit screen makes reading easier for her. On the internet there are a lot of prayer sites etc. that offer a range of spiritual material that we can use in different ways to recharge our spiritual batteries.
We’ve all heard people talking loudly on their mobile phones in public places. They give their personal details to the wide world, regardless of who hears them. When we pray, the only person who needs to hear our prayers is God. When we overhear a phone conversation, we only hear one person speaking. We need to remember that prayer, like a phone, is for a conversation, a two-way process which involves both talking and listening. A Julian Meeting is an important opportunity to listen, to allow God to take the initiative and speak to us if he chooses… or not.
Silence is increasingly difficult to find in the modern world – with aircraft overhead, traffic in the streets, piped music in the shops, and mobile phones everywhere. Just finding space to be silent can be difficult. It is also hard to be still. People are constantly ‘on the go’, multi-tasking, and expect everyone else to be the same. Wanting to sit still and quiet is seen as weird by some people. So a Julian Meeting is a valuable chance to be both still and silent, but with others.
Modern technology, like video-conferencing, enables several people to interact at a distance, sharing information and making decisions. A Julian Meeting allows for the interaction of people’s stillness and silence in a group, sharing the moment and allowing God to make all the decisions. This shared quiet stillness is something that cannot be described, only experienced. And this is at the heart of every Julian Meeting: our silent waiting together upon God.
Quotation
Martina Lehane Sheehan
It is said that a field that is allowed to lie fallow yields a richer crop the following year. Likewise for us, allowing fallow spaces each day can bear fruit. Stillness is not an escape from life; in fact it is often those who love to be busy and engaged with others who are called to be hermits, while those who love to be alone are called into an active life. Through the art of stillness we begin to assume more choice about our internal responses; there is less hurrying, even on those days w here there are lots of things to do.
Article
[unstated]
JM website, membership, social media
Since the IT workshop at our 40th Anniversary celebration in May 2013 we have been working to implement the things our members requested, so now we have:
Website and Membership Management System
Our new website is at www.thejulianmeetings.net (You may have to put this into the address bar until the search engines find us).
Here you can:
- View and update your personal details.
- Subscribe to the magazine, and renew your subscription.
- Register your Meeting, renew your registration.
- View and update your meeting details, including contact persons.
- Put information about your meeting, including photographs, and a link to your website / facebook page / twitter account on your meeting profile.
- You can pay by credit or debit card or by PayPal account. The payment systems are all run via PayPal but you do not need a PayPal account.
- Receive the magazine by email as well as post.
- Overseas members can also now receive the magazine by post.
- Advertise your quiet days / retreats on our Events Page. We can also administer online bookings and payments for you.
- Contact us directly through our message system on the Contacts page.
- Order our literature and other resources through our Publications page.
- Pray online.
- Find many resources about Christian Contemplative Prayer and Meditation.
- Submit articles and news for our blog as well as the magazine.
Make sure your details have transferred correctly and update where necessary
Important: In order to use the online functions you must have an email address. If you have an email address but have not told us previously, or have changed it, you will need to tell us your current email address before you can log in.
Meetings Have a look for your entry on the meeting directory. Check that it is displaying correctly. Log in using the ‘forgot password’ link (this will not work if we do not have an email address for you. If this is the case please contact us). You will receive an email with a password. Once you have logged in you can make any changes needed to update your information or add information about your meeting. You can also update your contact details.
Magazine Subscribers Log in using the ‘forgot password’ link. You will receive an email with a password. (this will not work if we do not have an email address for you. If this is the case please contact us). Once you have logged in make any changes you need to update your information.
Michael Cayley of the Hayling Island JM kindly volunteered to set up and manage a Facebook page for the Julian Meetings. Find the link on our website homepage or here https://www.facebook.com/JulianMeetings?ref=bookmarks, or search for ‘The Julian Meetings’ on Facebook.
If you use Facebook, please ‘like’ the page. You can make posts on the Facebook page yourself, for instance to publicise events you are organising; to discuss your experiences of silent prayer; to share relevant and helpful quotations; or to announce the setting up of new meetings or changes to
existing ones. We would very much like to make the page interactive. There is a shop facility on the Facebook page, which links to the publications page on the new website.
Michael Cayley has also set up a Twitter account for us, @julianmeetings, and Christine Quinn-Jones of the Coventry JM has kindly volunteered help him manage it. You can find the link on our website homepage or here https://twitter.com/julianmeetings, or search for ‘The Julian Meetings’ on Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, do ‘follow’ us, and retweet some of our tweets. If you have an event you would like to advertise through Twitter, please either email Michael through the new website, or send a tweet to the Julian Meetings twitter account.
Poem
Rowan Williams
Gethsemane
Who said that trees grow easily
compared with us? What if the bright
bare load that pushes down on them
insisted that they spread and bowed
and pleated back on themselves and cracked
and hunched? Light dropping like a palm
levelling the ground, backwards and forwards?
Across the valley are the other witnesses
of two millennia, the broad stones
packed by the hand of God, bristling
with little messages to fill the cracks.
As the light falls and flattens what grows
on these hills, the fault lines dart and spread,
there is room to say something, quick and tight.
Into the trees’ clefts, then, do we push
our folded words, thick as thumbs?
Somewhere inside the ancient bark, a voice
has been before us, pushed the densest word
of all, abba, and left it to be collected by
whoever happens to be passing, bent down
the same way by the hot unreadable palms.
Article
[unstated]
Worth Advertising Widely
In her article on their Quiet Day (Dec. 2014) Brenda Smith, of the Beverley Julian Meeting, realised she had not promoted their Julian Meeting for quite a while. This may be true of your Meeting also. It is very easy to limit where we advertise to our own immediate locality. But people are willing to travel quite a distance to a Meeting, or to a Quiet Day, if they know it exists!
People travel to our local Meetings from a town 8 miles to the east, a village 4 miles north-west, villages 5 and 8 miles to the south-west, and a village 9 miles west, plus folk from within the town itself. We hadn’t actually advertised in their home locations, though they now take a poster to put up in their church. They came from seeing JM posters and Waiting on God leaflets left in our local cathedral; at a busy Christian study centre; in a Christian book shop; on other church noticeboards; from my talk on contemplative prayer to a church group; and from meeting a Julian at another church event and getting chatting. God can use many opportunities, if we make it possible.
So think ‘outside the box’ when it comes to promoting your Julian Meeting, or your Quiet Day or other event. Perhaps next year Brenda could also get their Quiet Day advertised on the York Diocesan website, in their ‘events’ section (perhaps on the Durham, Lincoln, Sheffield and West Yorkshire & the Dales Diocesan websites also – if you don’t ask you certainly won’t get!); advertise it round the Methodist Circuits; on the RC Diocesan website; get it included on the weekly Christian e-news for York and district; advertise it through Churches Together; get it on local radio’s events listings…
Don’t forget to advertise your events on the JM website – particularly now it has been re-vamped – on the bulletin board and in the JM Newsletter.
Poem
Shirley Fry
Easter Search
On Easter Day I climbed a hill
Not just to find a daffodil
But, oh, to see if I could find
The God of Love and Heart and Mind.
I stood beside the wooden cross
And wept because of our great loss
And, oh, the thought of that cold tomb
Still fills me with sepulchral gloom.
So, where’s he gone this God of ours
Who burst forth in the early hours
Who rose again to live anew
And bring new life to me and you?
He’s not up in the realms above
He’s in the eyes of those we love.
He’s in the music of the thrush
And bursting out from inside us!
Article
Fiona Elliott
Greenbelt, Contemplative Prayer and Young People
Greenbelt, a Christian Arts Festival, began in 1974, in a field in Suffolk on August bank holiday weekend. We first visited the festival when it moved to Northamptonshire in ’77, when it was known for Music, Mud and Monks! It has evolved from being a rustic location with a few live bands and craft stalls, to having a comprehensive menu of music, performing arts, visual arts, literature, comedy, family and youth events as well as worship.
Thankfully there has been less mud for the last 20 years, when the festival occupied the most popular site, Cheltenham Race Course. But there has definitely been more music and more monks. Notably, Soul Space was developed in the panoramic lounge on the sixth floor: a quiet area, with prayer stations, space and cushions, and an area for led, meditative activities.
New venue
In 2014 the festival moved away from clean concrete and permanent buildings back to Northants and the grounds of a beautiful stately home. Soul Space was now The Mount: a shaped grass bank. 30 ft high, with a flat top. This large area, with a canopy / gazebo area of shelter across one corner for organised sessions, was the quiet space for prayer and meditation. Space to be solitary, and still. As tall as the trees, you could sit and stare out over the festival, silent but for the hum of festival noise, and views of rich green countryside, the lake, tents and people.
So many options for prayer
Saturday’s programme had the Franciscans creating a beginning, middle and end of the day, with their version of morning prayer, some thoughts on the theme of the weekend, ‘travelling light’, and an end of afternoon vespers. Other events happening were: mindfulness meditation by Tim Stead; The Cairn: Laying Down led by the Iona Community; a Quaker Meeting; and Evening Dissent by Christian Aid. Sunday gave opportunity for The Cairn: Wrestling, and a Silent Eucharist lead by Luminous. Monday brought Celtic Daily Prayer; Prayer 101 lead by the Student Christian Movement; and The Cairn: Occupying, with the Iona Community. This was just the programme for one venue – there were 17 others!
Finding our own silence
Silence is hard to find at an outdoor festival, but as you can see, there was plenty of input to lead you into your own silence and peace. I found it all completely inspiring; the Mount was a ‘thin place’.
Young people welcome
All age groups, including children, were represented on the Mount. There was also Mossy Church: combining ideas from Messy Church and Forest Church, with activities for families that point to or connect with Jesus, while focussing on God’s creation.
You will notice that one session was led by a student group. The Young Contemplatives 18-30s, have written two booklets, Reflections on prayer, produced by the World Community for Christian Meditation. Their second booklet comprises 15 short essays with titles including Silence; Waiting; The Spirituality of Surfers; and City-cycling with God.
Poem
Dennis Parry
Then visit, Lord
Then visit, Lord,
this soul of mine today
as Mary did Elizabeth;
Christ, John;
and ninety times nine months
prolong your stay,
making it my
eternal benison
Poem
[unstated]
Pentecost Haikus
As our Julian Meeting met just after Pentecost I led into the silence with a piece on the Spirit. During the silence these two haiku came to me ‘ready made’ and after the silence I hastily scribbled them down before I forgot them. Since Pentecost comes next month I wanted to share them – the image of the Spirit as a shape-shifter had never come to me before.
Shape-shifter Spirit
Come as breath, wind, fire or dove
Fill us with your love
Shape-shifter Spirit
Touch us, fill us, transform us
Send us out renewed
Book review
Elizabeth Ruth Obbard
Veronica Mary Rolf • Julian’s Gospel: illuminating the life and revelations of Julian of Norwich
Orbis Books / Alban Books, 2014 £19.99
A book so beautifully produced – a wonderful cover with a portrait of a woman of Julian’s time, fine binding – should contain something really worthwhile. And it does!
Mary Rolf’s scholarship and painstaking research are very evident. She starts with an overview of Julian in her time – the historical situation in England, the devastating results of the plague, the city of Norwich where she lived, the kind of sermons Julian would have heard, the plays she’d have seen, her life as a wife and mother in a merchant family. Of course some is conjecture, but deductions made with clarity and conviction. I think, as does Rolf, that Julian is our anchoress’s real name, and that everything points to her being a lay woman who entered her anchorhold just before the writing of the long text of her Shewings, around the age of fifty.
Rolf then takes us through the Revelations in a methodical way, with attention to Scripture, theology, and Julian’s own original account of what she ‘sees’ and what it ‘means’. Her insights unfold in the whole context of faith, daily life, and the questions about ultimate reality that so many of us ask today.
This absorbing book is based on Rolf’s extensive knowledge of Scripture, as well as deducing Julian’s position as a married woman in a cloth merchant’s household, shown in her images of clothing, cooking and motherhood.
‘Julian’s Gospel’ is really ‘Julian’s Good News’ for people of today who long for authentic spiritual teaching. Rolf imagines Julian leaving the final text of her ‘Shewings’ in her cell, to be found after her death. Fortunately they were preserved. Rolf’s book goes a long way to filling in the gaps. I almost felt, from looking at the woman on the cover, I was looking at Julian herself – thoughtful, humble, meditative, yet very ordinary.
This book is a gem. Do read it. You will not be disappointed.
Book review
Jennifer Tann
Shirley du Boulay • A Silent Melody: an experience of contemporary spiritual life
DLT, 2014, £12.99
De Boulay’s noted biographies of Teresa of Avila, Desmond Tutu and Dame Cicely Saunders raised my expectations of this book: it doesn’t disappoint.
Written in the first person, a difficult task which she came to enjoy, we accompany Shirley du Boulay on her own spiritual journey. From an Anglican family, she went to an Anglican boarding school, sat ‘diligently through hymns and sermons, but they meant little to us.’ But she was very aware of a mystical presence in her life, which was dominated by two spiritual experiences.
One, on a walk in woods, she encountered a huge beech tree and became aware that ‘the beech tree and I were one and that we were both one with the whole of the universe.’ Some years later the second was a series of extraordinary Shaman experiences which she courageously describes. These culminated in a violin and bow getting up and playing ‘All by themselves. Quite high in the air with no one holding the instrument or the bow.’ Her Guardian Musician, quite unsurprised, turned to the author and said ‘When you are in the still centre it just happens.’
She also records encounters with the Hindu Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; a loving marriage with a former Jesuit priest; early widowhood; Zen; and finally the acknowledgment that ‘However great my wish to be anchored in one religious tradition, it did not seem to be the way for me.’
Shirley du Boulay concludes with the thought that, ‘even as we embrace spirituality, so we reject religion and yet continue to try to define God.’ The definition of God to which she is drawn is that of God who is pure Being, and the spirituality she seeks is the understanding of this Being. This spirituality is about wholeness, the sacred, the numinous, the search for meaning and the mystical.
A uniquely wide-ranging and brave book.
Book review
Anne Stamper
Simon Barrington-Ward, The Jesus Prayer and the Great Exchange
Simon Barrington-Ward • The Jesus Prayer and the Great Exchange
Grove Spirituality S124, February 2013, £3.95
The JM booklet ‘Some Basics of Contemplative Prayer’ suggests using the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, as a verbal focus to anchor us and help us to deal with distracting thoughts.
Bishop Barrington Ward has written about this subject [The Jesus Prayer, Bible Reading Fellowship 1996 JM magazine Dec 2006 and with Brother Ramon Praying the Jesus Prayer together, Bible Reading Fellowship 2001]. He has led many retreats on the Jesus Prayer, two of which I have attended.
In this Grove book he provides something different: an autobiographical account describing his own faith journey, over seven decades and thousands of miles, as a ‘pathway of prayer’. First he tells of his early travels to Berlin and Nigeria in the 1950s. He then tells how, after 1984 in the somewhat surprising surroundings of rural Essex, he first met the Jesus Prayer as used by the Eastern Orthodox church; it was here that Father Sophrony instructed him to ‘practice the presence of Christ, sensing his being there with you, and you with him.’
Lastly is the bishop’s account of visiting Mount Athos where he prayed with the monks of various monasteries. He says this was: ‘to dive into a stream which is already flowing in the very direction in which you wanted to go, and then being simply borne by the current!’
Whilst on Mount Athos he explored the work of St Gregory of Papamas and the Great Exchange: ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’ (John 14:12). This great exchange is not only for the monks in their quest for true stillness but for all Christ’s followers everywhere. I think that we Julians, in our own way, are also seeking that ‘true stillness’.
This is not a book to teach you how to use the Jesus prayer – others do that. It is an insight into the pathway of prayer of a remarkable man; once the General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, then Bishop of Coventry. Now ‘retired’ he is honorary Fellow in Residence of Magdalene College, Cambridge and honorary assistant Bishop in Ely Diocese.
Book review
Janet Robinson
Gerard Hughes • Cry of Wonder: our own real identity
Bloomsbury (Continuum), 2014, £12.99
This last book by the author of ‘God of Surprises’ came out in the year he died, aged 90, and is the work of a person fighting to the very end. As did his most popular book, it focuses on Unity, Peace and Holiness but in the first two sections is also a searingly honest autobiography. Always one to kick against the pricks and constraints of his Jesuit calling, Hughes is no more optimistic now about the Church, or society, than earlier in his life. He says he has been forced, through times of rapid change, to keep questioning his own certainties. ‘I still believe in God, the Christian Church, but my understanding of God, the Church and of its creeds, of priesthood, of my own Jesuit religious life is changing in ways I could never have foreseen.’
That honesty, which kept many in the Church who might have left disillusioned, remains helpful and stimulating. The third section, about discernment and prayer, has insights which are deepened by experience. It was not an easy read, nor do the Unity and Peace sections suit devotional reading. But there are, throughout, passages which bring one up short and repay reflection: God has become more mysterious, yet more real, familiar and attractive.
It makes a meaningful history of a gallant spiritual thinker and activist and reading it is a final tribute to one who saw God in everything, refusing to be bound by dogma or denomination.
Book review
Karen Woollard
Carla A Grosch-Miller • Psalms Redux: poems and prayers
Canterbury Press, 2014, £10.99
Sensitive, thoughtful, elegant, rewarding, sympathetic, light-hearted, solemn, reflective, perceptive, significant, enduring. Carla A Grosch-Miller is known for the sensitive prayers she wrote for the United Reformed Church Prayer book. This book is a thorough and complete collection she described as a ‘project begun out of the blue’. In her personal prayer life she struggled to relate the metaphors used in the Psalms to her present-day theology and responded with this ‘restoration and refreshment’. The psalms have not been re-written, but their essence is refashioned into sympathetic and rewarding reflections which can be read alongside the original texts. The result is a collection of prayers which are warm and honest with more modern metaphors and less persecution of our enemies . They would be good to lead a group into silence.
The 23rd Psalm Redux starts
‘This I know:
My life is in Your hands,
I have nothing to fear.’
The 46th Psalm Redux starts
‘Sheltering God,
I hide myself in You.
Head swathed and bowed,
I listen for the still, small voice.’
I look forward to using 60 psalms redux in services when the lectionary meets Carla’s sensitively reworked prayer poems.
Book review
Yvonne Walker
Martina Lehane Sheehan • Whispers in the Stillness: mindfulness and spiritual awakening
Veritas Publications, Dublin, 2014, £11.00
The author of this book, a psychotherapist, retreat leader and spiritual director, explores the parallels between spirituality and mindfulness and their pathways to healing.
Each chapter encourages the creation of space in our lives to make room for awareness and reflection using real-life stories, passages from scripture and from well-known spiritual writers. Practical reflective exercises at the end of each chapter are designed to help us dig a little deeper, and to guide us towards the discernment of deeper patterns of contemplative prayer and the blocks which can get in the way.
This is a book which the reader can dip in to or use on a regular basis for creating space and focusing on the subject covered in the chapter. I found this a very refreshing way of reflecting on familiar topics such as expectations of perfection, needing to deserve God’s love, enough-ness, the need to be right and the need to be needed.
It also led me to the conclusion that there is nothing new under the sun, in the sections on contemplative awareness, the fruits of our stillness and the practice of the present moment.
It has been good to take time to pause and to be reminded of the centuries old teachings about the soul’s yearning for God, being God’s beloved child, the practice of stillness, the focus on body, mind and spirit, and the use of the breath in prayer – all these ways of relating to God which are now becoming popular practice in a secular context.