JM April 2023
Article
Rowan Williams
Greetings to the Julian Meetings on their anniversary
In 2003 Archbishop Rowan Williams was due to be the keynote speaker at our 30th anniversary celebration. Sadly, a national emergency meant that he could not come, but he sent us a ‘Greeting’ to be read out in his absence. He has agreed that we can reproduce it here, as it is still relevant:
Very slowly, our churches have begun to rediscover that they will not be healing and healthy places without room for silence and for the attentive gaze towards God. In our present cultural climate more than ever, if we can’t offer the living sense of a larger world to inhabit we can’t expect too much credibility.
In this reshaping of our priorities, the Julian Meetings have played a crucial though appropriately quiet part. I am deeply grateful that these networks have spread so far and taken such root in the last three decades; and I hope and pray that they will continue to grow and to nurture people in awareness of that love which is God’s meaning – ‘which love was never slaked, nor ever shall’.
Article
[unstated]
Celebrate 50 years of JM
Do you value the Julian Meetings and what they offer?
Do you want the Julian Meetings to continue?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to either, or both, of these questions we need you to come – in person, or via Zoom – to the National Gathering on 17 June and share your experience of JM and your views on how to plan for JM’s future.
It does not matter if you belong to a thriving Julian Meeting (tell us what you are doing!) or one that is static, or one that is a hybrid of personal and distanced, or if you are a lone Julian:- it is YOUR JM network.
If you cannot come, please let us know before the event what you value most about JM and how you think JM can flourish in the next few years.
To live is to change
JM has changed in many ways over the last 50 years. On page 20 you can read the last part of Hilary Wakeman’s account of JM’s early days. We felt it important that people were able to read about how JM began, and grew.
On page 14 Is a list of dates and events from 1994 to today, so that you can see how JM has developed and changed over the last 30 years.
Overview
During the years from 1996 membership of the Advisory Group (later a JM Council + a Core Group) remained ever changing, and many people took on a variety of roles. Many other individuals, and some Julian Meetings, all helped to cover the jobs which keep the network connected. A number of people also promoted JM, or led workshops, at events run by other Christian groups, particularly Anglican Dioceses, which enabled us to be known more widely.
Not just us
There has been a slow but steady decline in the number of Julian Meetings over the last 20 years, to less than 200. This decline has been seen in some other spiritual organisations which started after the last world war but have now closed: The Servants of Christ the King; The Well at Willen; The Creative Arts Retreat Movement.
The ‘Covid effect’
Covid has had a huge impact on all areas of life, JM included. Meeting in person was out of the question – but modern technology allowed groups to meet digitally in various ways. Some Meetings were joined by folk from miles away – even from the other side of the globe.
Other Meetings used the telephone, or e-mailed / snail-mailed lead-ins and lead-outs to maintain a shared silence in some form or another. Some meetings still meet in this way, while others just meet in person now this is possible.
Because of covid, people lost that special connection of gathering in silence physically with others – being present with each other, and with God, in the shared silence. And many newcomers since covid may never have had that experience at all.
We have some very active and growing Julian Meetings, and others whose membership is both declining in numbers and increasing in age. We also have 395 people who receive the JM magazine, plus those who read their Meeting’s copy. What forms might individual Julian Meetings take in the future? What will the JM network actually be offering?
Covid and the JM Council
The covid restrictions also affected the JM council. Meeting in person, rather than via Zoom, allows people to get to know each other over coffee or a meal, not just in the business meeting. We had often invited interested people to join one of our overnight meetings, to help them and us to gauge if they might get involved in running JM. But covid stopped that. At the same time illness and increasing age have thinned the ranks of the Council, and we really do need new people to come on board and help run JM.
There is a list of the jobs currently done by members of the JM council. Roles have always been flexible, depending on people’s skills and availability. Is there anything on this list that you might be able to help with?
FINALLY, PLEASE:
- Celebrate all that JM has been for the last 50 years.
- Come to the National Gathering, to take JM forward
- Send us your views and suggestions for the future
- Pray for us that we may be guided by the Spirit in all that we do.
Poem
[unstated]
Prayer is not just seeking answers
Prayer is not just seeking answers, or always done kneeling –
it’s anger, it’s wrestling, it’s silence, revealing.
Faith is not just following, hoping to find –
it’s darkness and doubts and knowing you’re blind.
Forgiveness is not given like manna or quails –
it’s costly, it’s deadly, it’s thorns and it’s nails.
Love isn’t lovely, or sun with no rain –
it’s beautiful, yes, but it’s not without pain.
Prayer is about being,
faith about seeing,
forgiveness about receiving.
Love is believing
Article
[unstated]
The Julian Meetings: summary of central admin roles
These are current JM roles (those in italics need good IT skills) that keep the JM network running. Many need to be handed on to new people in the next 2-3 years, but all are flexible.
National Co-ordinator
Receive and respond to general enquiries about JM. Liaise with archives.
Treasurer
Manage the bank accounts, PayPal, produce annual accounts, make payments as necessary.
Magazine Subscribers
Keep the mailing lists up to date.
Meetings Admin.
Registration of meetings. Update Google Map + any Meeting information + spreadsheet for Meetings without e-mail. Deal with cheques. Currently using Mailer Lite.
Magazine mailing
Produce labels + letters / other inserts.
Manage social media a/cs
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
Manage Audio/Visual resources and accounts
Sound Cloud, Anchor Podcast, YouTube, Vimeo.
Website
Maintain and develop the website. WordPress.com and Woo Commerce, Blog Manager.
Emails, domain names and web hosting
We use One.com.
Magazine Editor
Solicit and receive articles; produce the magazine; arrange printing 3 times a year.
Book Reviews
Liaise with publishers and reviewers, new and existing. Edit reviews. Send to magazine editor.
Magazine mailing
Put magazines / inserts into envelopes, put labels & stamps on the envelopes and put them in the post.
Shop / Publications Deal with orders made by post / online. Store stock and keep an inventory. Send Starter Packs to new meetings. We use Woo Commerce /Wordpress for online orders. Manage Woo Commerce store.
Convenor
Organise meetings of the National Council (yearly overnight residential) and the Admin Group (mainly Zoom). The Admin Group co-ordinates JM day to day admin.
Meetings Information
Receive enquiries about meetings. Send out information on how to contact the meetings.
Safeguarding Officer
Review and update our Safeguarding Policy. Receive any safeguarding enquiries.
Poem
Lynne Chitty
There are no words
There are no words,
when a son hangs naked on a brutal cross,
hands and feet crushed by nails,
thorns piercing a bowing head.
There are no words
when a body is breaking
under the venomous weight of a crowd’s frenzy
when a spirit is slowly drained.
There are no words
except, his words
‘Behold your mother’ ‘Behold your son’
‘I thirst’ ‘It is finished’.
And now, he has grown silent too
and we are left with an empty cross
and an echo
and a knowing it was all for us, all for us.
And we wait for our shame
to be clothed by grave clothes,
his grave clothes
but not today
Article
Deidre Morris
How God can use our creativity
Threads Through Creation
Needlework Panels created by Jaqui Parkinson
Last October I was in Ripon Cathedral, marvelling at 12 needlework panels illustrating the story of creation. Each panel is 7+ feet tall, and 5-8 feet wide – BIG. From across the cathedral they blazed with colour, pattern, light: all the glory of God’s creation.
Moving closer, the designs became fascinating. How Jacqui has interpreted the opening chapters of Genesis is quite amazing. Each panel encapsulates one element of the story. The panels are: In the beginning; God spoke – light!; God spoke – water!; God spoke – a green earth!; Universe – sparkle with lights!; Water and sky – splash with colour!; Earth – dance with creatures!; God rested – and it was good; Danger – a snake in the garden; Two trees – two keepers; A critical choice; Goodbye to Eden.
Moving really close one can see the details of the stitching and the range of fabrics, patterns and colours used. My husband was very patient while I pored over each panel in turn, there was so much to see in each one.
My husband bought me the book Jacqui had written, which charts her journey for this work – the theology, the ideas, the practicalities. It is full of pictures, both to remind me of the panels and to be a wonderful resource for meditation and contemplation about God and creation.
Each panel has a chapter, with a theme. Each chapter has 5 sections: the story; the story continues, beyond Genesis; the design and stitching; the story continues with us – our part in the story; the story continues into eternity.
The panels show how our lives interweave with God. Jacqui was a wife, mother of two children and a teacher of drama when she went, almost by chance, to a textile workshop – and God hooked her to do His work!
I love one passage in the book:
‘On nearly every piece of my textile work I employ old, well used and darned, cotton or linen bedsheets. I just love the idea that sheets like these have ‘seen life’. A bed sheet representing the fabric which wraps us round at birth, and encloses each of us at death. …. Sheets that carry within their fibres a long or short lifetime of dreams and nightmares. And possibilities of another world.’
Jacqui did an earlier series Threads Through Revelation, and hopes to finish a third set of panels on Threads Through the Cross, to complete the story.
If you visit Jacqui’s website www.jacqui-textiles.com you will see pictures of the panels, details of her work and a downloadable PDF about the panels.
Cleave the Wood and There I Am
Some years ago I attended a quiet day led by Christopher Lewis. He led us in meditations based on his own wooden sculptures, accompanied by recorded music. He began to work with wood in 1970 when he and his wife went out as missionaries to Sarawak and took a set of tools with them. Sarawak and Borneo have an amazing range of beautiful woods, which he fashioned into various gaming boards, but also practical items like a cot for their first child.
‘I had always enjoyed the scent and feel of wood. I enjoyed, too, the variety of colour, of density, of the way the grain behaved. I marvelled at rough sawn timber being transformed into a thing of beauty. …. The process became a parable of God’s grace: a free gift, unexpected and undeserved…. More and more it seemed to me that a piece of timber influenced or even dictated what I did with it. I began to see the meaning in those words attributed to Jesus on the Oxyrhynchus papyrus: ‘Lift up the stone and there shalt thou find me: cleave the wood and I am there.”
Returning to England, Christopher was a Canon at Bradford Cathedral and then Chaplain at Shepherd’s Dene Retreat House and Diocesan Advisor for Spirituality. He began to use some of his carvings to illustrate addresses, or as the basis for meditations. He was struck by how people responded to them. They saw things in the carvings that would never have occurred to him, and some were profoundly moved. He went on to use them for Quiet Days and Retreats.
So the spiritual energy we call God had reached out through wood – first to Christopher, in a simple and basic way – and then, often quite differently, to other people through the pieces he created.
We worship a creator God. So perhaps we need to be aware of how he can work through our creativity – even a creativity we are as yet unaware of – to connect with other people and to tell his story not just in words but many other unique ways.
Article
[unstated]
The Julian Meetings: admin matters
We thank everyone who continues to support us by making a financial donation towards the cost of the magazine. If you value the JM magazine, please could you make a donation towards the cost of providing it. As with every other cost in life at present (except our Meeting subscription!) printing and postage costs have risen sharply so your generosity is very much appreciated. Details of how to donate are on pages 1 and 31, and on our website. Thank you also for your kind and appreciative comments on JM, and the JM magazine.
Events
As society is becoming more ‘normal’ some Julian Meetings may be planning a Quiet Day (or part of a day) or Juliantide event, either for this year or for 2024. Please check that you follow our safeguarding procedures, and complete the necessary forms. Do remember that your event can be advertised in the magazine (if details are available early enough) and on our website (assuming all the safeguarding procedures are fulfilled).
Did you renew your Meeting Registration for 2023?
If you can renew online this is a big help to us. We have moved to a new website and database. This means that you cannot log into your old meeting record. Just go to the website and the ‘Renew Your Meeting for 2023’ page. You can create a new payment account during this process but this is not your meeting record – do not try to log in. It just makes things easier for you next time and creates a record of your payments. If there are any changes to your meeting details please email it@thejulianmeetings.net with the changes. The new systems have many advantages, including being much cheaper, but the ability to log into and make changes to your meeting record has been lost.
If you can’t renew online just send your cheque and renewal letter as described on the letter.
Article
[unstated]
Following on from ‘Beginnings’
At the 21st anniversary retreat in 1994, JM revealed a specially designed logo, with blue as ‘our’ colour. The logo has since been used on all our publications and advertising.
1997 Hilary Wakeman moved to Ireland and Yvonne Walker became National Co-ordinator (Hilary remained Convenor). Pam Fawcett handed over as magazine editor to Graham Johnson. For practical reasons, the magazine became an A5 rather than an A4 publication and was printed professionally.
We also developed a website, as modern technology began to impinge on traditional ways to communicate.
2001 John Stamper developed a database, to facilitate his wife, Anne, dealing with magazine subscriptions and mailings.
2002 we held our last weekend retreat, due to rising costs, fewer people coming and lack of suitable accommodation.
2003 John Stamper updated and improved the website.
We also held a 30th anniversary day event in Oxford, which was very successful. We held day events in York (2006); Salisbury (2007); Peterborough (2008). For many years there were local Quiet Days in Devon, Bristol, East Yorkshire and South Wales plus Juliantide events in Lincoln and Winchester, and some day events elsewhere.
2004 Deidre Morris became National Co-ordinator, after Yvonne Walker retired.
2009 we introduced the annual registration of each Julian Meeting (people often forgot to tell us when details changed). It also ensured that every Julian Meeting received a copy of the magazine, for members to share.
2011+2012 We had two new posters; ‘Approaching Silence’; an A5 Contemplative Prayer leaflet; and a resources list.
2013 we held a 40th anniversary event in London, which was very well attended, and people volunteered to help.
2015 we updated to a brand new website and database – to make it easier to stay simple! Our technology has continued to move forward: our information, publications etc. are now available digitally, but still also in print. People increasingly look for information online, so we need to be online to be found.
2016 we developed a Safeguarding policy; produced ‘Try Stillness; deposited much early JM material in the new Julian Meetings archive, held at Birmingham University’s Cadbury Research Library, and deposit publications regularly.
2017 the logo was updated to include wording indicating what JM was all about.
2021 Personal magazine subscriptions were replaced by donations (Meeting subscriptions remain) and the GB newsletter material was incorporated into the magazine.
Quotation
Peg Huxtable
The best reflections are there when the wind, the water and you are still.
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
Fiona Elliott
A Bucket-List Experience
During covid lockdown I was inspired by a TV programme where a team of celebrities, including some with physical disabilities, walked part of The Camino, an ancient Pilgrim route in Northern Spain. All the people were exploring their own spirituality, but united to reach the end, together: The Cathedral of St. James in Santiago de Compostella.
Being a wheelchair user, I researched the possibility of having this adventure myself. I found Pilgrim travel agents who organised an accessible route and accommodation. My daughter, Lucie, and her partner Holly became my travel angels; having no holiday plans themselves, they accepted my invitation for this pilgrimage.
We flew to Northern Spain, and took a taxi to our starting town, Melides, 50km from the holy site. We rested the next day, then walked for three consecutive days. The last day was spent resting and exploring the cathedral within the ‘city of stars’, before an uneventful flight home.
We were prepared for challenges, and made a formidable team: Holly, chief engineer and Lucie chief carer. We dealt with: a damaged wheelchair on the out-going flight, (got instructions to mend it over phone from the UK); impossible stepping stones through a fast flowing river, (found an alternative route); traversing steep, rocky and gravelly path-ways, (had help to push and steer wheelchair); very awkward ‘disabled’ toilets and a drained wheelchair battery. Most of this was on our first day of just 11km/8miles, which prepared us for the next two days, each of 19km/11miles.
The joys more than balanced out the difficulties. The freedom to follow a sign-posted route with no stiles or gates, through open countryside, observing the simple rural lifestyles from the confines of my wheelchair, was sheer heaven. It was wonderful breathing the scent of the walnut tree groves, feeling empowered by people from all over the world as we chatted and walked, sharing the communal greeting of positivity, ‘Buen Camino’.
Our Camino highlight was the fun and the lessons we learnt on our first walking day. We discovered the limitations of the wheelchair and the joy of being rescued by a charming group of families, with competitive teenage boys, from Gibraltar. Between them, they pushed me a mile or two to the next hostelry. We had lunch together while I recharged the wheel-chair batteries, and the drinks were on me! Lesson: The battery only powers the chair for five miles, and a one hour recharge only provided one more mile! The next two days, two of us used a taxi part way, while the other did the walk.
Not everyone claimed to have spiritual reasons for walking the Camino. However, an unforgettable Catholic couple from Wisconsin, in their 70s, had carefully paced themselves to walk 1800km in three months from Paris, to Santiago. They stayed overnight in hostels for 5-6 Euros with no rest days. Surely propelled by a Pilgrim spirit, they looked fresh and claimed to feel wonderful. We also saw walkers nursing blisters, sprained ankles and looking exhausted!
Despite our short Camino, the impact on all three of us was huge. It’s difficult to define ‘the magic’, but Lucie and I were deeply moved as we paused in the Pilgrim’s chapel, reading a poem from a screen: The Camino Beatitudes. Jesus taught us that a blessing exists alongside an adversity, and this Camino poet encapsulated our experience perfectly: There is joy in the struggle.
The gift the Camino Community gives is fellowship and empowerment for this set journey, ‘walking simply’ from A to B. It’s a symbol and strategy to take home for our Journey of Life, birth to death. Souvenirs and photos remind me to hold the ‘magic’ of my Camino experience with thankfulness.
Article
Hilary Wakeman
Beginnings – Part 3
Misconceptions and Realities
Since this whole book is about contemplative prayer it may seem superfluous to attempt a basic statement of what it is. But there are some odd misconceptions around that it would be good to clear up.
The worst conception is that contemplation is ‘letting the Devil in’. I have heard one or two ministers say this and I have been appalled to think that they are depriving their people of a very deep experience of the presence of God through their own ignorance or fear. No prayer offered to God, no heart opened to God, can be said to produce evil. I believe that this thinking comes from the experience that some have, when the mind is cleared of all that we so deliberately keep it full of, of thoughts surfacing that have been long repressed. They surface precisely because they have not been dealt with. The solution is to bring them into God’s light and allow God to heal us of whatever they represent: pains and griefs, intolerable desires, or that side of ourselves which we know to be not altogether good.
Another misconception is that contemplative prayer is difficult, and only for those who can give many hours to it. Anyone can do it. Children can. Many of us can remember engaging with it as children, though we wouldn’t have given it a name or thought we were doing anything in particular. And the adults around us would probably not have known what we were doing, or they may unknowingly have helped us by providing the surroundings that made it possible: quiet churches, chapels, the open countryside, the sea.
Although many books have been written about it, contemplative prayer is very simple: a stilling of the mind and body to attend to God. All we need is a desire for God, for a closer relationship with God. And then, amazingly, God seems to do the rest: entices, rewards, draws us on, delights and encourages us. So that it is not a duty or a chore but something we turn to very willingly – because it is deeply pleasurable. Wherever did we get the idea that we are not to enjoy God?
Have a Go
To anyone who has never tried to meditate the bare statement that anyone can do it may be rather annoying. And so, for anyone who wants to begin, I offer this basic lead-in. Find somewhere where you will be undisturbed. Sit comfortably upright. Decide how long you will spend in silence – probably no more than 5-6 minutes to begin with – and commit that time to God. Consciously relax your body, and let your breathing flow gently, but from right down in your diaphragm rather than your chest. Be aware of all that your senses can tell you: what you can see, smell, hear, taste and feel. Choose a God-centring word or phrase to take into the silence, close your eyes and begin not just to think it, but to say it in your mind , over and over again, gently and in time with your breathing, until it becomes drowned in silence. Be as still as you can, so that your body can find its own unity and your mind and your heart can enter that unity. You will not need to try to be conscious of God: you have put yourself into God’s keeping and that is enough. When your time is up, mark the end of your silence with a brief prayer or a physical movement such a sign of the cross or a bow of gratitude.
What happens between the beginning and the end of your meditation will range from being indescribable to being boring. It may seem as if you have spent the time fighting off intrusive trivial thoughts or deeper anxieties or concerns. A good way of dealing with them is to recognise them and give them over to God, on the understanding that you will retrieve them and deal with them later: and thus go back to stillness. On some occasions you may experience a timelessness, an evenness quite featureless and yet sensed as containing all that is, from which you emerge with a calm joy, refreshed and recreated. No matter how the time of meditation is felt, it is always a precious exchange: your gift to God, God’s gift to you.
Once you know that you want to pray in this way it is important to decide for how long, and how often, you will do it – and stick to it. Too short a time is better than an ambitious length that you will constantly fall to keep.
With time the practice changes us. We recognise it ourselves or others notice it. They comment that we are less grumbly or less uptight, more patient or more fair-minded. As we change for the better the world changes for the better. Practitioners of Transcendental Meditation reckon they can cut the crime rate in a given area if they can get 10% of the population meditating. Soka Gakkai Buddhists are, at the time I write this, chanting (arguably a form of meditation) for peace in Ireland and democracy in South Africa. Cynics will deny that meditation can have any effects on the social problems of the world. Yet even if we take the popular butterfly theory (that a butterfly moving its wings in Beijing can alter the climate in California) as no more than a pictorial way of saying that everything that happens affects the future of everything else, how can we doubt that millions of people engaging in a selfless state of good will can affect the state of the world?
To join occasionally with other people who meditate can be a great encouragement, especially after the first flush of enthusiasm. At first it feels different to be in such utter silence with other people if you have been accustomed to meditating on your own, but then it becomes very precious and valuable. And your daily solo meditations are then upheld by the knowledge that those others are also praying in this way in their own daily routines.
Every day of the week, every day of the month – with the probable exception of Sundays and days like Christmas – Julian groups are meeting somewhere, together keeping a silence of rapt attention to God. They are ensuring that every day of the year – without any exceptions – those thousands of people, people of every variety, alone or together, are turning to God in the contemplation that is beyond words and that daily brings the world and God closer together.
The Future
This book marks our 21st anniversary. In one sense this saddens me. I wrote in our magazine on our 10th anniversary that I hoped we would not reach our 20th. What I meant was that I hoped that by then the prayer of silence would have become such a normal part of Christian life that there would no longer be any need for a network like JM. That hasn’t happened, yet there still seems ground for hope that it will. More and more, people are asking for periods of silence during their church services. Increasingly the wonder of silence is experienced at places like Taizé, or on parish ‘quiet days’, or during a few days away at a retreat house.
When this movement first started most of us felt that attitudes to praying were polarized, with on the one extreme those who were drawn to the prayer of silence and on the other those who prayed charismatically. Over the years, people have come to feel much freer about using both ways. Now we are enriched by being able to pray in many different ways.
But there are still far too many people who have never experienced either way of praying, let alone both. There is still a sadly prevalent assumption that being a Christian is about going to church on Sundays, and striving to be good the rest of the week. That’s like getting married without being in love. The desire to worship God and to live in union with God – to be ‘good’ – flows naturally from the experience of God: but many need to be encouraged to allow themselves that experience.
Maybe the Julian Meetings and other such movements still need to grow.
Book review
Ann Morris
Muthuraj Swamy and Stephen Spencer • Listening Together. Global Anglican Perspectives on Renewal of Prayer and the Religious Life
Forward Movement, 2020, £9.99
This is a book of articles written by Christians sharing their experience of prayer and mission in their home communities across the 165 countries of the Anglican Communion. The purpose is to explore the challenges and opportunities to revive and expand our Christian communities. The stories and reflections build on the core rock of prayer ─ coming into God’s presence with open hearts and minds, in stillness and with a listening awareness, together and alone ─ putting our lives into the hands of God. The prime question is no longer ‘What should we believe?’ but ‘How should we live?’
We read how women’s groups in Kenya have empowered and grown leaders in a patriarchal culture, and the sadness of Pentecostal communities where liturgy has become a performance when rote ‘spontaneous’ responses have become stale. We read case studies from the Sudan, Egypt, Myanmar, Brazil, New Zealand, India and many dispersed and gathered monastic communities of different traditions and spiritual experiences. We are diverse but united by the Lord’s Prayer in the mission and ministry of Jesus, an engagement with the world, with God and with each other.
To meet today’s needs, we are encouraged to consider either how to renew tried and tested forms of liturgy and prayer, and / or adopt something new.
Three quotes give a flavour of this book:
The Melanesian Brotherhood: ‘Our life without prayer would be like a garden without water: it would dry up and die.’
Stephen Barabas: ‘The church should be an army on the march; instead, it is a hospital full of wounded soldiers.’
Peter Moran spoke of creating a society of ‘go-givers, rather than go-getters’.
Book review
Michael Cayley
Kaveh Akbar • The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse. 100 Poets on the Divine
Penguin Books, 2022
What is spiritual verse? Kaveh Akbar defines it as ‘musical language meant to thin the partition between a person and a divine’, with ‘a divine’ interpreted broadly. This gives him scope to include works embodying many different types of experience, from many different religious traditions.
What distinguishes this anthology is its range: from ancient Sumer, Babylon and Egypt to modern times, with poems of the twentieth century taking up over a third of the space. The editor is an Iranian American, from an Islamic background, and there is no white Euro-American bias. There are poems from Africa, indigenous American peoples, and Asia as well as from Europe. A high proportion are in translation ─ by many different hands ─ and the translations read well. Some are likely to be familiar, like Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn and a passage from the Song of Songs, but for most readers the majority will probably be new and welcome discoveries.
This is avowedly an assembly of the editor’s personal favourites, and is none the worse for that. It is a book to be dipped into and returned to, and is full of gems.
Book review
Bob Edge
Sr Joan Chittister OSB • The Monastic Heart. 50 Simple Practices for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life
Hodder & Stoughton, 2022, £16.99
Sr Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun and prolific writer of more than 60 books and hundreds of papers. She has a PhD from Penn State University and, along with twelve honorary doctorates, is a fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Sister Joan is a controversial figure, ruffling many feathers with her views on contraception, nuclear weapons and the ordination of women. Speaking of feathers, she owns a very small parrot called Lady Hildegarde.
Sister Joan says this book is her response to a challenge made to her in 1996, ‘to turn monastic language into a language people can understand in their own lives.’ She has succeeded in doing this.
There is wisdom and inspiration on every page. The book is intriguing and thought provoking. It is very accessible, as it is skilfully written and in bite size chunks ─ a gift to tired eyes at bedtime. My first reading, cover to cover, was very satisfying, but it is a book that you can open at any chapter.
Sister Joan introduces each aspect of monastic practice and invites us to reflect on it, and discover what spiritual sanity means for us. She offers advice on how to integrate the practices into our lives: each one is a soothing balm for the mind and soul.
My initial impression was sceptical and I wondered why she would write something that looked like a publisher’s bid to get to the ‘spiritual not religious’ section before Christmas. Why 50 practices, I wondered. The Rule of St Benedict has 73. If you read to the end, you will find out. I recommend that you do just that.
Book review
Gail Ballinger
Hilary Wakeman • A Different World: an English vicar in West Cork
Liffey Press, 2021, £15.95
ISBN978-1-8383593-5-5
We know Hilary Wakeman as the founder of The Julian Meetings in 1973. In 1994 she was one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of England. In 1996 she went to become Rector of a Church of Ireland parish in the south-west of Ireland – a predominantly Roman Catholic area. Quite a culture shock for her, her husband and her daughter, this new life so far from Norwich. A different world.
Hilary kept a diary of the first year of her new life: its warm welcome and hospitality; pastoral visiting, when customs and the way of life were unfamiliar; community celebrations; the friendliness, dances and funerals; the developing life of the church; ecumenical development. She recorded daily highs and lows, plus a murder, a suicide, a fatal accident. It gives us a welcome insight into what that new life was like.
Book review
Janet Robinson
Rosalind Brown • Prayers for Living: 500 prayers for public and private worship
Sacristy Press, 2021, £19.99
I am not sure that a Quaker is the correct person to review this book as it derives from the work of Canon Rosalind Brown, in the setting of Durham Cathedral, where she lead intercessionary prayers for 13 years. However, I have been seduced by much of its contents and have found it valuable.
The preface is an interesting discussion about prayer in a public setting, an insight into the careful and wide-ranging preparation that has to be made. Timing, appropriateness, audience all have to be considered, along with an awareness, at times, of the daily news coverage.
The subjects of the prayers are covered in detail: the needs of the world – and I like the way the author does not shrink from the faults of those who lead nations ─ creation, families, relationships, sorrows, the Church; all have a freshness of approach which is appealing.
While the book would certainly appeal to anyone who leads prayer in public worship, I suggest the subjects covered could be stepping stones to private prayer and meditation. The structure of the prayers may appear, sometimes, to consist of overlong sentences. However, read aloud ─ as they are meant to be ─ they work very well indeed. I can only echo the words of a worshipper in Durham Cathedral who told Canon Brown: ‘Your prayers say what I want to say to God.’
Book review
Peter Rowe
Kevin Goodrich OP • The Greatest Desire. Daily readings with Walter Hilton
DLT, 2023, £8.99
Walter Hilton was one of the four great English mystics of the 14th century. Less well known than Julian of Norwich, Richard Rolle of Hampole, or the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, he was widely read in pre-Reformation years. The Scale of Perfection, (short extracts of which form the bulk of this book are taken) provided spiritual direction to an anchoress.
Walter studied canon law at Cambridge but later went on to a life of prayer, devotion and contemplation. He died in his mid-50s, in 1396, having become an Augustinian.
None of this book’s 50 or so short extracts from Hilton’s Scale of Perfection are longer than a page. All could be read in one sitting but are more helpful for those drawn to meditation or contemplation if they are read very slowly, and only one at a time. Covering many aspects of prayer, the emphasis is on contemplation, so very nourishing for Julians.
For those interested in The Scale of Perfection and his other main work, The Mixed Life, full (English) texts are available in other books. Reading one short extract on a regular basis gives a much better chance of something of real worth being imbibed on each visit to this book. That is its great virtue.
Book review
Ann Morris
Ruth Haley Barton • Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s transforming presence
Form (imprint of SPCK), 2021, £11.99
A perfect book for a beginner, on this way of communing with God in the muchness of life: she shares her frustrations and delights in embracing silence for more than a few moments. It offers the more experienced a chance to reflect on their own practice in case resistance, tiredness, emptiness or denial has crept in. She outlines practices rooted in the word of God, with Elijah as our spiritual companion. This is no quick fix for when familiar methods of seeking God come up empty: we may need a spiritual companion for support. The busy and careworn are ‘like a jar of river water all shaken up … sit still long enough for the sediment to settle and let the water clear.’ Only then can we find intimacy with God and our true self, as solitude and silence are times not for judging but for listening. Barton sees this not as a personal blessing, but a treasure to be used in the service of others. God’s love, overflowing, stirs us to action:– the cycle from prayer to action, then back to prayer. Letting go our fears, we can respond to God’s risky invitations. As Elijah found God in the silence after the storm, this book starts gently and builds to a crescendo as the struggle to accept ourselves in the wilderness and waiting ─ until we are willing to risk believing that God will turn up.