Community of Aidan and Hilda – USA

If you live within reach of Omaha, join us on retreat at Camp Moses Merrill, Linwood, NE. It is a beautiful and  peaceful place in the Platte Valley, 40 miles west of Omaha. The dates are Monday August 6th – Wednesday August 8th. You can learn more about the Community, and living under the Aidan Way.
For more details e-mail the Guardian, pauljohn@frontiernet.neet

THE NO IVY LEAGUE

I rarely remember my dreams. I do know God speaks in dreams, and my night prayers include asking God to reveal God’s truth in my dreams – so when I remember a dream, there is often a message in it.
I woke about two months ago with a dream memory. A tree was growing straight and tall, deeply rooted and in full leaf. The trunk was covered in ivy, though – a common sight in Portland, OR, where I used to live. The city has a very active No Ivy League dedicated to its eradication. But I digress.
The English ivy that infests Portland attacks trees via runners all along its length. In my dream, there were two big ivy trunks that were firmly rooted inside the trunk of the tree at the top of its main trunk. The ivy roots dove deep into the trunk of the tree, feeding off its life. They were seriously weakening the tree, and in time might even kill it. What might the deeper meaning be?
Over the next month or so (which included the solitude of driving 3,000 miles to Virginia and back from my home in Minnesota) I looked for meanings everywhere, except in myself. It was over a month later that it dawned on me. This was a picture of my life. The two ivy trunks were sins and habits that are draining my life. The good news is that the dream showed my life as deeply rooted in God’s goodness and truth, drawing life from that rich soil, and reaching out to God’s life-giving Spirit daily. The bad news is that these ‘besetting sins,’ as Christians used to call them, were draining off that life and choking my ability to bear fruit. Like many of us, I suspect, I like to think of them as things I can just control day by day with a little help from God. The dream reminded me just what a hold they, and other sins and failings, have on me.
What are those sins, you ask? How about I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours? For some of you, they may be gambling, pride, alcohol or drug abuse, or displaced anger. In the deeply honest book I am reading at the moment, two pastors confess their struggles with consumerism and personal ambition, two sins that are rooted very deep – and usually therefore unnoticed – in our American culture. (The book is ‘Renovating the Church,’ by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken. Highly recommended.) For me, they are procrastination (“never put off till tomorrow what can wait till the day after”) and lust.
*** *** ***
The reason God gives such a dream, or any fresh realization about your life, is so you can do something about it. I’m trying. Happily, the lines of action are simple, though not always easy.
Cut off the Ivy’s Supply. I have pictured myself chopping through the trunk of the ivy where it enters the treetrunk, a little each day. It tries to grow back, but I keep chopping. You see the picture. Advertisements, the ways of society, habits, and so on all fill our eyes and ears and constantly put temptation in our path. They feed the ivy from outside. We can’t avoid that, but, as Luther said: I can’t stop the birds landing on my head, but I can stop them making nests in my beard.
Pull out the root. Most of the time, this is a slow, steady process of cooperating with God. Step by step, we remake our thought life, our secret self-talk and our wills. The steady rhythm of following the first three elements of the Aidan Way works wonders over time: three-times daily prayer for the ‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus’ life; opening your life to your anamchara; life-long learning.
‘Abide in the Vine.’ The phrase is taken from John 15, which is next Sunday’s gospel reading. It’s a simple and beautiful image, the more so if you know anything about how to care for vines. As we raise our ‘branches’ to receive life from God’s Spirit, and put down roots into the life and teaching of Jesus, the space left by the withering of the parasitic ivy root is filled day by day with the good and life-giving. Jesus prunes the bad growth, and feeds the good growth, so we can bear more fruit.
Welcome to the No Ivy League.

Just received from Founding Guardian Ray Simpson: flyer for a new, online study course. The title is “Introduction to Celtic Christian Spirituality.” Subjects covered include various imaginative ways to approach this rich tradition, such as ‘Borderlands;’ ‘Love of the poor, justice and hospitality;’ ‘Womanhood, wisdom and nurture;’ and ‘Manhood, desert athletes and living martyrs.’
The course is pitched at undergraduate degree level, and some work is assessed by a tutor. However, the aim is to facilitate a holistic approach that the authors call ‘head through the heart’ learning. Thus “the work is not graded in the traditional academic sense…. Rather, the tutor will comment on the degree to which …. Students have been able to engage with, reflect upon, and think critically about the material.” “This makes for a rich learning experience with the student’s personal responses and reflection at the centre,” says the flyer.
The cost of the course is £300 sterling. Let Paul Martin know if you are interested at pauljohn@frontiernet.net, and I will e-mail you the flyer. We will then work out tutorial and payment arrangements if you decide to go ahead.

Sit. Close mouth, eyes, ears. Take a deep breath. Now another. Sit.

Refocus, redirect. Feel the natural rhythms around you. New life is starting to sprout. Days are starting to lengthen – this is where we get the word ‘Lent.’

Be aware.

Spring-clean your soul. God made you, too, to operate in those rhythms. Make space for new life – space in your time, your thoughts, your relationships. If you need (but not ‘just because’), set aside some activity, some meals, some pleasures. But do so in joy for the new things God will grow in their place.
As you sense the Spirit, be ready. Holy Spirit may drive you, too, like Jesus, into wild places. After 40 days there, bring back the good word: “Time’s up! God’s reign is on its way. Change your life and believe the good news!”

I wrote an article on ‘What Makes Worship “Celtic” for the Wild Goose newsletter. I decided not to post it here until the ‘Goose’ came out, which it did online today. So here it is. As always, your comments enrich me and all of us greatly.

What makes Worship ‘Celtic?’

There is no simple answer. You can’t make worship Celtic by:
- Adding an Irish or Welsh hymn or two.
- Throwing in a Riverdance routine.
- Trying to recreate what we understand worship in the Celtic monasteries to have been like. It was typically in Latin, which none of the regular people understood; and featured hours of reciting the Psalms from memory.

Just as the Celtic Way is wide-ranging, and draws together all the different streams of Christian faith, so any attempt to explain ‘Celtic worship’ will need to be like color printing, building up a picture from thousands of pixels drawn from different ‘color cartridges.’

First, worship should be Trinitarian. It should take us to a place where we:
- Sense the Mystery of God the Creator
- Know the Love of God the Father
- Hear the Word of God written
- Touch and Taste the Word of God made flesh
- Are inspired by the Son of God Jesus
- Feel the Wind of God renewing and cleansing Spirit
- Respond to the Spirit empowering and sending us Spirit

Second, the Celts believed humans are physical and spiritual beings. They did not go with Augustine’s contempt for the physical, which was a hangover from his time as a Manichean – an approach which owed more to Greek philosophy than the Hebrew God.

So worship should speak to body, mind and spirit.

In “Discover Your Spiritual Type” [Alban Institute, Washington, DC, 1995], Corinne Ware sets out how we respond to God, and therefore how we worship. I have not read the whole book, I confess, but here is how I heard it explained. In the way we know and worship God, 2 axes direct us to one or more of four quadrants. Which of them fit you best? If it helps, here are some simpler labels.

For the vertical line, Thinking and Feeling are fine. For the horizontal, maybe (left) God as Mystery and (right) God as Knowable. For the quadrants, (top right) MIND/Intellectual, (bottom right) HEART/Evangelical, (bottom left) SOUL/catholic, (top left) HANDS/Social Gospel. This takes us straight to one of our key desires as a Community, to draw together all the streams of Christian faith. The best worship moves us up, down and across the circle. It has something to say to all of us, and it moves all of us to know God in fresh ways.

One of the most striking aspects of contemporary worship which aims to be ‘Celtic’ is language and activity that is designed to speak to the imagination and the senses, not just the mind. Esther de Waal spoke of discovering this way of worship: “As I have gone deeper in my exploration of …. Celtic Christianity, …. I found myself being taken into the world of poetry and song. My own religious upbringing had been so intellectual and cerebral, a matter of going to church, of reciting the creed, of saying prayers. And instead here was a world that told me books were not enough, that books could not express the wonder of the world God had made:

“The Father created the world by a miracle;
It is difficult to express its measure.
Letters cannot contain it, letters cannot comprehend it.”
(9th century Welsh poem)
[de Waal, “The Celtic Way of Prayer,” Doubleday, New York, 1997,p xiii]

Closely related to this is expecting to meet God in creation, as well as scripture. “If you would know the Creator, get to know His creation,” said Columbanus. There are many stories of the Celtic saints worshiping in the open air, or even waist-deep in the sea (Cuthbert, Kevin). The high crosses of the British Isles witness to open air worship, even in the British climate! The Celts were in touch with the rhythms of morning, noon and night, of seasons, of light and dark. de Waal talks of the bell of the monastery’s pencil tower reminding the people who lived around it to follow the hours of prayer, much as the muezzin of a mosque calls the faithful to prayer.

Then, too, worship should cover all of life. Many have noted that Carmina Gadelica includes many prayers that invoke and celebrate the presence of God and the saints in all of everyday life: cooking, working, sleeping, all is sacred. Worship must not be relegated to an hour or two on Sunday, or a time of special thanks or need. In looking for worship to be a constant attitude that runs through all of our life like a golden thread, Ray Simpson speaks of the Community of Aidan and Hilda as “reconnecting us to the Spirit and the Scriptures, the Saints and the Streets, and the Seasons and the Soil.”

As food for thought, here (very briefly) are a number of opposites which come together in the Celtic Way, inc. worship:

• Solitary (the ‘desert’, hermit, green martyrdom) vs. shared (monastery, church);
• Silent (contemplation,) vs. voiced (words, music);
• Rooted (place of resurrection, stabilitas) vs. journeying (white martyrdom, peregrinatio);
• Formal (Latin, chanted, often memorized) vs. informal (anywhere, any time);
• Liturgical vs. charismatic (Paul shows how to balance these in 1 Cor. 14);
• Everyday (‘smooring’ the fire, milking, steering the boat) vs. eternal;
• Grounded in today (living a holy life, bringing God our daily concerns) vs. eternal (union with those who have gone before, who are companions on the way);
• Teaching vs. mystical;
• Full of praise vs. aware of the dark and suffering (St. Patrick’s breastplate)

In many ways, these opposites come down to balancing heart and hands; mind and soul (as in the diagram above). And, of course, they spring from the rich complexity of the Celtic soul.

They also remind me of something I heard Yo Yo Ma say of Schubert’s music: that in the greatest of joy, there is pain, and in the worst of despair, there is hope.
Celtic worship should help us relate all of ourselves to all of God in all of life.

The Monday morning theme in our ‘Celtic Prayer Book’ is Creation. I love Ray’s opening praise for Morning Prayer for the day:

“God of life, you summon the day to dawn
and call us to create with you.

You are the Rock from which all earth is fashioned.
You are the Food from which all souls are fed.
You are the force from which all power lines travel.
You are the Source who is creation’s head.”

Never fails to start my work week well.

Happy St. Teilo’s Day – or, if my Welsh is right, Bore Teilo Sant.

Why do we remember these obscure saints? For me, it is snippets like this, which is taken from “Saints of the Isles,” Vol. 2 of Ray Simpson’s ‘Celtic Prayer Book’:

Teilo reportedly said, “The greatest wisdom in a person is to refrain from injuring another person when one has the power to do so.”

Dear Lord, we pray for this wisdom in our politicians; in our business people; in our dealings with the rest of the world, in trade and politics.

Something I would not otherwise ponder, or turn into prayer.

Gannon Sims pointed me to a very good blog on the Fresh Expressions USA website.

The subject is how God prefers a tent to a temple – a traveling God. “God refuses to remain under house arrest,” says the author. Worth checking out. Allow me to share some of my reply, which refers to this Sunday’s JCEL gospel (Jn 1:43-51).

A major starting point must be in the attitude of each one of us. Catholics will say “I’ve been baptized, I worship regularly, I’ve arrived.” Evangelicals say, “I’ve been born again, I can Tebow with the best of them, I’ve arrived.” None of which takes us all that much closer to the Jesus who says “Follow me” (as in this Sunday’s Common Lectionary gospel passage from Jn 1:43-51). Our first response is “Where to?”, but there is no known destination. We follow the One who, as soon as He received the Spirit, was propelled into the wilderness and tested to breaking-point; who has nowhere to lay his head; and whom we meet in the hungry, the naked and the jailbirds.

The Celtic Christians called it “green martyrdom,” giving up all the comforts of life and looking for God in the ‘wilderness’ and places of need; or “white martyrdom,” giving up home and family and setting off into the unknown, with no way of return. They knew they would not find God on their pilgrimage unless they took God with them; but they were certain they would not find God if they stayed where they were, and built a temple so God could stay there too. Hence the sentence at the end of all my e-mails: “Live life as a pilgrimage from which we shall not return.”

This Week’s Lectionary Readings : Paul in Athens (Acts 17)

Paul found the Athenians a tough crowd to speak to, and got a limited response in the city. In fact, I have heard preachers say that his relative failure in Athens is why in Corinth, his next stop, he says he “resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). I don’t agree. The cities were very different: Athens was a sophisticated place, a marketplace for many competing philosophies, while Corinth was a port city, a melting-pot of nations and morals: it’s like comparing Palo Alto to Oakland, or Manhattan to Newark. I believe that, in Acts 17, we see Paul adopting an approach that was far more suitable for Athens. It was a city, says Luke, where they “spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (Ac. 17:21). So Paul adapted how he presented his message to their starting point. He made the effort to find out their culture, their language, and to start from there in bringing them the gospel.

In 6 BCE, a plague was spreading through Athens. The city fathers sent to a prophet called Epimenides, of Crete. “Take a herd of mixed black and white sheep,” he said, “and drive them from the Acropolis out of the city. Where they stop and lie down, sacrifice them at that spot.” Surprisingly, it worked, and the plague ceased. So, on the spot where the unfortunate sheep were sacrificed, the grateful Athenians erected the statue Paul saw decades later, inscribed “To an Unknown God.” Paul starts with the general experience of the God of creation, then moves to the particular as they had already experienced it. He speaks to them as ‘very religious’ (v22). Does that not remind you of our own society, where more and more describe themselves as not tied to any religion, but ‘spiritual?’ If you like alliteration, English bible teacher (and CA&H Voyager) Sean Blackman says Paul spoke of the Greatness, Goodness, Government and Grace of God. Paul’s approach is a model of finding the points where God is already at work in his hearers’ world, and starting from those points as he explains the gospel of Christ.

The lesson of cultural sensitivity was not lost on the Celtic Christians. They noted that the number 3 was powerful and sacred to the pre-Christian Celts, and proclaimed the Trinity. They noted that sacrifice was central to Druidism, and explained that Christ was the one, true sacrifice, and no more was needed. They noted that oaks were sacred to the Celts and, far from cutting them down and denouncing such superstition, placed their own churches and monasteries right there. Aidan’s call to head the mission to Northumbria famously followed his criticism of the failed former leader for not doing this. “It seems to me, brother, you should have put yourself in their shoes, and fed them the milk of the Word.”

The point is worth making very strongly today. It is not just that the old ways of evangelizing our neighbors don’t work any longer. Most churches are not even drawing the young people brought up in the church into active Christian faith. We are faced with new generations who don’t relate to church as we have known it. How can we ‘put ourselves in their shoes, and give them the milk of the Word?’ Were I to be preaching this Sunday, I think I would challenge my hearers and myself to think through how we can bring the Good News to 3 or 4 more or less real neighbors. In my own small town, I thought of these more or less real people:

-         a 48-year-old electrician, who has always left ‘religion’ to his wife and kids, and now fears he may never find work again (except at Wal-Mart or McDonalds).

-         a mid-30s young graduate couple living in a 5-bedroom lakefront home, who come into town only for bits of shopping, and the winery.

-         a 28-year-old single parent, fighting to keep life and home together while living in an old trailer home.

-         a 38-year-old vet, traumatized by his time in Iraq, and his hand in the killings of war, who feels he cannot be forgiven, and is utterly unworthy to step inside a church.

The times are different, the task is the same: “Go, and make disciples.”

“I SURVIVED THE RAPTURE – May 21st, 2011”

Unless you have been in the wilderness for a month, you must have heard that an 89-year-old California preacher and broadcaster called Harold Camping has been confidently prophesying the ‘Rapture’ will happen on May 21st at 6.00pm. It will, he says, be progressive around the world, as the hour arrives in each time zone. There will be earthquakes and portents, he adds, and all the chosen, about 3% of humankind, will be snatched up to heaven. This will be a prelude to the actual end of the world, in October. Since Camping has plenty of followers, and a biiig publicity budget, this has created a lot of excitement, and humor. Billboards have appeared across the USA, and a number of people have quit their jobs, sold their assets, and set off to spread the word.
As I write this at 4.30pm Central Time on R-Day, here is what has happened:
- 6pm has come and gone in Australia and New Zealand, Asia and then Europe.
- No quakes or mysterious disappearances have been reported.
- One Christian friend has been posting as if from heaven all day on his Facebook page.
- Over 800,000 people have signed up for a Facebook event page called “Post-Rapture Looting.”
- The BBC News reports that some North Carolina atheists are planning a Post-Rapture party they call “The Best Damned Party in North Carolina.”
- Sales of “I Survived the Rapture” T-shirts are booming.
Is all of this just harmless nonsense? More to the point for this page, is there a Celtic Christian word to say about it all? I think so.

First, before I get to the authentically Celtic Christian, I have to join the many who have pointed out that neither the concept nor the word ‘Rapture’ appear in the Bible. It is a C19 invention of a British preacher, who misunderstood the nature of the Book of Revelation, and cobbled together verses from the Bible to construct his timeline. Matthew 24 and 1 Thess. 5 both make clear that there will be an end, and it will be sudden. But no-one, not even Jesus (at least, as human) will know the time in advance. In Matthew 24-25, in no less than 6 parables, Jesus underlines this, and teaches his followers what their attitude should be: be ready, no matter when your Master returns. My favorite analogy is that it is like the contrast between playing the end of a soccer game, and a basketball game. In basketball, you can look at the clock, and know you have precisely 2.7 seconds left. In football, you may know you are in added time, but you ‘play to the whistle,’ not knowing when the referee will blow time.
Now, more of a Celtic response, as I see it.
Prophecy. Spectacular failures like Camping’s supposed word from God tempt us to avoid the whole minefield of spiritual gifts. Not so the Celtic Christians. There are numerous stories of words of prophecy coming to them. For example, the story goes that, as the plague came to Melrose Abbey, Abbot Boisil foretold that he would die of plague, while Cuthbert, his protégé, would become sick, but would live. He spent the next week, his last, teaching the young man all he knew about John’s gospel.
Paul says clearly “Eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.” (1 Cor. 12:31 and 14:1). But he frames this by insisting that we are always to be part of ‘the body of Christ,’ and that the highest way is the way of love. He follows it by saying all must be done in order, and with the motive of building faith. “The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets,” he adds (14:32). So, prophecy should be tested. What is its motive – to build faith, or to spread fear and mind-control? Does it conform to the Bible? Has the prophet held him/herself accountable? Has she/he been found truthful before? Camping’s prophecy of the Rapture fails all 4 of those tests, I believe.
Proclamation. This whole sad episode does show that people in this country are hungry for certainty in uncertain times, for meaning in a time of greed, for love in a time when community is breaking down. Like Aidan, our call is to provide it, humbly but clearly. As we do, we will listen to our contemporaries and respect their beliefs, affirming all that is right and true and loving. Meanwhile, we proclaim Christ by our lives and our love and, when necessary, our words.
Prayer. For many, the failed prophecy just confirms their belief that all Christians are stupid, naïve and misled – hence all the fun for so many on Facebook. Let us pray that for some, at least, it will raise serious questions, to which they will find meaningful answers. And let us pray for those who have been betrayed by this false teaching, that their faith may be rebuilt on a surer foundation.
I love the story of Petrock, which Penny Warren, one of our Community of Aidan and Hilda UK Guardians, shared recently. St Petrock was returning from Rome with some fellow monks. They were heading back to Cornwall, via North Devon. The rain set in and, as regularly happens there, the river burst its banks and there was no way across for several days. The men were pretty fed-up until Petrock prophesied that the rain would stop next day and they would be able to travel on. The next day the rain continued. Petrock was so ashamed of his presuming to hear the voice of God that he turned around and walked back to Rome as penance. Mr. Camping, what will your penance be?