Dear all,

 

I was speaking about confession and forgiveness on Sunday morning during which some wag wondered if forgiveness extended even to the England goalkeeper. Send thoughts on this matter to the official world cup website NeverwriteofftheGermans.com

 

Most news will be submerged under world cup coverage at the moment, but there was some very interesting developments last week. Prince Charles, who excites admiration and derision in almost equal measure made a speech at an Islamic centre in which he said that the crisis in the western world was not economic or social but spiritual. He said that we were suffering a "crisis of the soul". In The Times he was derided by an opinion piece for even daring to use an unscientific term like the soul and was quickly and stridently dismissed. The centrepiece of Charles' argument was that we are now disconnected from the world about us and nature has been objectified and is now an inert "it" - a thing to be exploited - rather than a part of a spiritual created whole that we are also a part. You may remember that I wrote about the same thing some months ago.

 

Also - and I cannot hide my dismay here for what is happening in our communion - We have suspended representatives from the American branch of our church from all international Anglican bodies because they consecrated another openly gay Bishop in Los Angeles. Shame on the Church of England. It is the hypocrisy that hurts most. We have always had gay Bishops but only on a cowardly "don't ask don't tell" policy. It was only when ten gay British Bishops were publicly outed by Peter Tatchell in 1994 that the church was shamed into adopting a policy of listening and engagement. What the Americans are really being castigated for is their openness and honesty.

 

The story of Jesus exorcising demons from a man and sending them into a herd of pigs appears this week's gospel reading in Luke (8:26-39). It also appears in Matthew and is based on the original story in Mark 5:1-20. This kind of tale can leave people scratching their heads and asking themselves "What does it mean?"

What the story does is build up a powerful montage of impurity. From the very start: They are at the other side of the lake - Gentile territory - who are impure. The man lives amongst tombs - which are impure. Pigs - impure animals - graze nearby. The demons who possess the man are "legion" a term that point to the gentile Roman and therefore impure occupiers of the land. A common religious assumption is that impurity is contagious - hence you don't touch impure things or people because that makes you impure as well. But Jesus is not made impure by any of these things - the presence of Jesus makes exactly the opposite happen. The unclean spirits are exorcised. The unclean animals are destroyed. The man ends up clothed, in his right mind and restored to community. The point of the story is that the Spirit of God, here active in Jesus, overcomes impurity rather than the other way around. 

 

On a day trip to Saltburn sitting on the pier in the sunshine watching the surfers with Alex and Claire I was reminded of how most spiritual moments happen in just the ordinariness of real life. Later on in the town in a gift shop we got talking to a man - a spiritual seeker - who would not define himself by any religious tag, who was mastering the technique of harmonic overtones - a Tibetan Buddhist practice. In the shop he held a metal bowl in his hand and from deep within him started to emanate deep and strange sounds. After a few seconds the bowl also started to vibrate and "sing" with him creating a beautiful sound  and when he modulated his voice the bowl followed him creating a "moment" which made the hairs of the back of our necks stand on end. It was a strange spiritual moment - elemental and absolutely mesmerising.  

 

My daughter Claire is back from university. Here is her situation. Most of her friends at University are atheists. The Christian union is a small cult of fierce extremists. The churches around are typically a dull torrent of words - like being in a lecture - and uninspiring. A modern person with a deep thoughtful belief in God and spiritual needs but nowhere to go. Once when she first got to Stirling, on a walk, she stumbled upon an abandoned ruined church. She prayed alone in there and went back once or twice but now it is cordoned off. Now she only goes to church when she is back with us in Gainford mainly just to please me I suspect. We talk often about spiritual things, about what we see as missing from the modern church that is in turn missing a whole generation of people like her forlornly excluded from organised religion because it doesn't connect.  

 

So she has issued me with a challenge to come up with a form of Christian service that both she and I would actually be drawn to and find fulfilling. Quite a challenge, and quite a departure because I've been so used to only ever using "authorised" words and actions, I have never actually considered doing it. Something that is open, informal, inclusive, unifying, sacramental and with space and silence and spiritual depth. And it is quite scary too. Freedom to do whatever you want is quite daunting as any new blank page can be. But drawing on the best of both East and West and the emerging Church theological paradigm this is something that is starting to excite my imagination. My mind is now buzzing with Taize style chants, silence, incense, more silence, bells, agape bread, modern creeds, prayer journeys around the church, short interactive sermons, Celtic earthiness. A fresh expression of Christianity to attack head on the crisis of the soul that Prince Charles is talking about. If I come up with something that floats you'll be the first to know.

 

 

The Prayer for Today is based on psalm 42 which also lies behind the well known hymn "As the deer pants for the water" 

 

 

Love and peace

 

Martin