The single most important key
to understanding the foundation
of the Northumbria Community
can be found in the crisis of faith that was
the common experience of the few who first started out
on the journey.

Like most ordinary folk,
back in 1980
secularization,
new age,
paradigm shift,
new physics and
post modernity
were not part of our vocabulary.

Yet, intuitively, each of us to a
greater or lesser extent
had begun to sense
and experience the momentous
changes and forces that were
redefining our culture.

We felt their impact and influence
in our homes, in the work-place, in the media and arts
and at the shops. With our families and friends,
neighbours and colleagues and in particular within
our church communities and our apparent
ineffectiveness to contribute to the
reconstruction of a society going through
radical transition.

The hope which
The Holy Spirit
had deposited in our
Christian communities
during the renewal movement
of the 70′s many had chosen
to invest in the house church movement
as a response to the inertia of the established Churches.

Unprepared to make
such an investment
and unconvinced this
was the way to move forward
some of us began to confront
those ‘chaotic forces,’
the cause of this
crisis of faith.

In 1985, a new group
of individuals were called together
to arrange Easter workshops.

Alan, John, Terry, Paul
Rob, Andy, Chris,
and others began to meet
and Heartcry emerged.

Heartcry represents the formative period
of creativity and thought expressed in art, music,poetry,
dance, drama, storytelling, metaphors and writing,
from which the language and ethos of Northumbria community
was born and is still sustained.

Heartcry
Internal émigré
Landscape of the Heart
Winter’s night
Come away My love
What mean these stones?
Who is it that you seek?
How can I sing the Lord’s song?
How then shall we live?
Set up the way marks
Child’s cry
Break down the walls
Kingdom in the streets
Cry for the desert..

these are themes from Heartcry ,
each pregnant with a meaning that gave us
hope, understanding, expression, as we
sought ‘an ethic for Christians and other aliens
in a strange land.’

This was the call
then, this is the call
now,

‘Come away My love’

We begin today with a story about St Kevin of Ireland:

‘Kevin devoted part of each day to reading the Scriptures, sitting in his hut, with his arms stretched out through the window reaching up to heaven.  One day, while he was reading, a blackbird, thinking the arm was a branch, settled on Kevin’s open hand.  There it made a nest and laid some eggs.  When Kevin saw what was happening he was so filled with love for the bird that he did not move.  Instead he remained in that same position until the eggs were hatched and the young birds could fly.’

Remember this story, for I intend to use it as a key to unlock a number of aspects of today’s subject, because for me it epitomises the understanding the early Celtic Christians had of God at work in the happenings of nature and their appropriate response.  To them the natural world demonstrated His power, and manifests His presence, and tells us that He is immediate in His concern.

If we think of the three great areas of temptation, the world, the flesh and the devil, it is the first of these three species we are addressing for the temptation is to exploit the natural world and spend it unfairly, or to acknowledge the creation but ignore the Creator.  This is why Jesus taught his disciples to consider the wild flowers, and watch the birds – the early Celtic saints were foolish enough to take Him at His word. They had no illusions about the world; they knew mankind had fallen and the original creation had also been damaged and tainted; they reckoned there to be a real and malevolent spirit at work in the world, but they sought to work in harmony with the hand of God, and around their ingenuousness we see time and time again a harmony restored an a patch of heaven blossoms around them.

Even people become less argumentative!

A cow who sneaks off from the herd for a few moments daily to make friends with Kevin immediately gives more milk!  No wonder the blackbird found his hands a secure place to rest.

Another hermit who had a blackbird for a friend reckoned the bird to be a far more spiritual being than himself – without calculating the time to know when to pray the blackbird ‘sings God’s praises all day long.  I need to beg forgiveness,’ says the hermit, ‘to make myself pure and fit for God.  But the blackbird who drinks with me from the stream sheds no tears of contrition: he is as God made him, with no stain of sin.’

A World in Tension

Patrick says,

‘I do not trust myself as long as I am in the body of this death, because he is strong who daily endeavours to turn me away from the faith … the flesh, the enemy, is ever dragging us unto death, that is, to enticements to do that which is forbidden.’

Cuthbert continued with the same awareness of ongoing conflict when he said,

‘If I could live in a tiny dwelling on a rock in the ocean, surrounded by the swelling waves, cut off from the knowledge and the sight of all, I would still not be free from the cares of this fleeting world nor from the fear that somehow the love of money might snatch away.’

A sentence from W Stringfellow is relevant here, which sums up the struggle the Celtic saints engaged in by their lives, as well as the tension evident in the cruelties of nature:

‘Incarnational theology regards the world in the fullness of its fallen estate as simultaneously disclosing the ecumenical, militant, triumphant presence of God.’

The natural world is somehow twisted and distorted because of the rebellion of Satan and the fall of man, and we can only imagine what it will be like for all the distortion to be gone and the time to come again when the lion and the lamb can lie down safely together.

One curious story is of a brother called Colman who corresponded with Columba of Iona.  Colman had as a companion a fly that would walk down the page at whatever pace he was reading the lines.  What is more, if Colman was called away on business, or even if he looked up from the page to reflect on what he had read, then the fly stayed at the line, keeping his place for him until he could continue.  As some of you will be aware, the Lord of the Flies is the literal translation of Beelzebub, a name ascribed in the Scriptures to the devil!  So having a fly for a friend, assisting his study of the Scriptures is doubly remarkable.

Responsibility – Off-setting the Fallenness

Kevin’s hands support the blackbird and stop the nest from falling and the risk of the eggs smashing.  His action, his decision to co-operate with the creative process and not to work against it is significant.  As Pelagius’ teaching stressed, the moral choices of an individual can make a life and death difference.  This is true even if we cannot measure or comprehend the consequences.

Cuthbert could be on the island in the ocean he would eventually come to as a hermit ‘cut off from the knowledge and the sight of all’, yet even there his choices would affect other people in a significant way.  He is responsible.  We see other signs of his care and the sense of responsibility he feels for the people and creatures that surround him.  Going out to preach one day Cuthbert took a boy with him for company.  He assures the boy that God can provide a meal for them and could even use the eagle flying above them to do it.  When the same eagle brings them a large fish, he insists that the bird be given half as a ‘servant’s share’ then had the rest cooked for them by a family with whom they shared the meal.

He had concern for the brothers who came to spend Christmas with him, and continued to warn them to watch and pray, sensing real danger ahead for them.  They return to find that the plague has broken out again on Lindisfarne.  He knew as little as they what the danger was to be, but sensed the urgency to prepare them for any eventuality, and to die unprepared was something he would not wish on anyone.  Quietly, in the face of all the horror that is to face them, he does what he can to help them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said that we must reckon humanity to have ‘come of age’, and accept our share of responsibility for the world’s future.  Perhaps God has rather left us to get on with it, or perhaps His desired initiatives come to nothing too often precisely because it takes no initiatives to bring about in real terms the very things He has commanded already, not least in the Scriptures.

In the life of Patrick we see just such a determination to make a difference especially in the land where years before he had been held prisoner.  He considers himself ‘an Epistle of Christ for salvation to the ends of the earth,’ and tells how God in him withstood all the discouragement and pleadings and reservations of others, anything that would keep him from fulfilling his part in the fulfilling of the great commission given to the church in the scriptures, prepared to ‘endure many persecutions’, ready to give his life ‘for His name’s sake unhesitatingly and very gladly.’

Patrick was inspired by the promise in Scripture that ‘they shall come from the east and west, and from the south and from the north’ and sit down with the saints of old in the Kingdom of God.  And when these words were fulfilled he wanted to know that some who would meet there would do so precisely because he had obeyed Christ’s command to, ‘Go, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’

Another of his favourite passages was from Hosea where the prophet changes the names of his children.  Those called ‘Not my people’ would he call ‘my people’; she who was written off with the name ‘Have no mercy’ would be known as the ‘one’ who received mercy,’ and where it was said ‘You are not my people’, there they will be called children of the Living God.  How true these words became of pagan Ireland which slowly became known for a people who served and loved God!  Words like these from scripture continued to be an inspiration to those who followed Patrick’s teaching and example.

Patrick’s first experiences on his return to Ireland were perhaps pivotal in forming his strategy for further mission, for he was brought before the king and his druids and required to give an account of himself and defence of his action in lighting a fire in defiance of the druids.  From then on, he deliberately prospered the course of the gospel by seeking out rulers and leaders, kings and tribal chiefs.  Demanding and audience as the ambassador of the High King over all kings, the Lord of Lords, he was given a serious hearing and would then preach tirelessly until his witness bore fruit.  Systematically training his converts, and using their testimony first-hand before others of similar rank and status in neighbouring territories, within twenty-five years the result was that most of the country was converted and it was dotted with churches.

Amongst the Celts in general is a suspicion of riches and their subtle power to corrupt or imprison, but this is more often expressed in concern than judgementalism.  The inside of the soul of a rich man without love we are told is like the darkest night, the coldest winter, the bleakest mountain and ‘you would rather have your body hacked in pieces than present such a soul as this; you would rather be boiled or burned alive than suffer such inward torment!’ Hear the overwhelming sense of responsibility in these words, and the over-all view is this, that man is crucially involved in the outworking of God’s plans, that in the face of overwhelming need it is his own task to take initiatives.

It is in the light of this we must see Aidan’s choice of Lindisfarne as his base of operations, a place cut off enough to open on heaven, but close enough also to Bamburgh to be never far from the concerns of secular life and influence.  There is something remarkably modern and authentic about Aidan’s decision to customarily go on foot in order to meet people more effectively.  For us the alternative way may not be horse-back, but we too take steps not to isolate ourselves from people at large; we too make deliberate choices to embrace a particular lifestyle, one that may be opposite in its goals and values to that which people expect us to pursue.  Aidan’s integrity was such that he did not value wealth at all, never looked for any worldly possessions, and loved to give away to the poor whatever he received from kings or wealthy folk.  He spoke to whoever he met, and would rebuke wealthy people just as outspokenly as he did those who had nothing.  He was only concerned for their spiritual health, and we are told that ‘the highest recommendation of his teaching’ to everybody was that ‘he and his followers lived as they taught’.  He never used money as a way of influencing people, although he freely offered hospitality.

These words are close to Aidan’s way of life:

‘Remember the poor when you eat fine meat and drink fine ale, at your fine carved table.. The poor have no food except what you feed them, no shelter except your house when you welcome them, no warmth except your glowing fire.’

If Aidan had power to make a difference for someone he used it, poor families, slaves or kings.

Do you remember the story of King Edwin listening to Paulinus?  Coift, the pagan chief-priest said that human life is like a sparrows flight through the king’s dining-hall, brief and meaningless with no knowledge of what has happened before it flew in through the open window or what will happen when it flies out of the window opposite.  The challenge Coift threw to Paulinus was that this new faith make more sense of it all.  For him there was already nothing in their own worship as pagans, and the more he had sought for truth in the old religion the less he had found there.  Now, convinced of the truth of the gospel instead, he demanded that all their previous altars be cursed and put to flame. He rode out to the temple near York and to the great interest of the crowds arrived armed, by stallion, already in defiance of the taboos which insisted on priests riding only on a mare and always unarmed.  Hurling his spear in the open door of the temple he called on his friends to set fire to the place and destroy it.

Someone needed to take action if truth were really truth – talk was not enough.

Education would be enough to change a person’s status; some of Aidan’s disciples were initially redeemed from slavery.  The Christian way counted everyone as of equal importance, but it seemed natural for those of noble or royal birth to emerge as leaders also in the monastic or religious life, and often this was the case.

Columba was one of these who had to learn the principles of involvement on politics and matters of state without compromising his position as representative of the Church.  The principle largely was this: diplomacy may be of value and a legitimate area of involvement, but any killing was directly in contravention of the sacred Commandments. After the alleged blood-battle he had brought about over his secretly copied psalter, he had presumably learnt not to use his rank and breeding to just get his own way.  His authority was now more clearly proceeding from his knowledge of Christ.

Adomnan gives us the first written account of a water-beast of some sort in Loch Ness which had bitten a man swimming there.  Columba allows his friend Lugne to swim across the Loch to fetch a boat, and when the monster appears calmly makes the sign of the cross and commands it not to touch the man, but instead to quickly turn around.  Of course, it obeyed him, in the name of God.  King Brude’s castle doors and gates similarly refused to remain closed when Columba and Comgall made the sign of the Cross, having been shut out.  It becomes natural for us to believe that natural laws will be broken or things thrown into harmony to glorify God as God’s representatives appear on the scene.

Finding A Forgotten Rhythm

It is very easy for us to become swept away by the ways everything tends to happen and the way everyone else behaves.  Society shows a way of life more and more reflecting fallenness and removed from the rhythm still inherent in much of nature.  A primitive way of life makes us more aware of those rhythms – with no electricity we become very conscious of daylight hours; limited resources make us aware of the cost of heating in winter, and with less frozen and prepackaged food, we would return to eating things only when they are in season.  I am not advocating that we stop using electricity any more than try to undiscover the wheel, but only pointing out that for many people life is further and further removed from the rhythms inherent in nature.

Anyone living on Holy Island is immediately aware of how the tide to arrange our life around the tide; it will not arrange itself around our plans or preferences.

One way or another it is desirable for us to find rhythm again in our lives, a rhythm of prayer and rest and work, an integration of ourselves with the created order and with the Creator Himself.  The rhythm is important bringing a genuine sensation of oneness with much of our surrounding, and an order and continuity.  The Celtic style of monasticism captures this spirit even with its variety of expressions, and rules of life.  So we see Columba even to the last day of his life sharing in humble labour, and completing an appropriate portion of the scripture-copying that was his task in hand.  That same day he sat down to catch his breath and the white horse who used to transport the milk churns came over and laid his head in Columba’s breast and began to weep and be upset.  Columba refused to have the horse sent away “Let him alone” he said, “for he loves me.  Let him pour out his tears of grief here in my bosom.”

McNeill’s History of Iona quotes someone by the name of Troup who says,

‘The secret of the early Celts lay in this, that they linked sacrament with service, altar with hearth, worship with work.’

The account of Columba’s last day exemplifies this.  Also in remarkable harmony with the spirit of it are the words of the so-called ‘weeping scholar’ who writes,

‘When I eat I continue praying, and when I sleep my snores are songs of praise.’

Columba sees the caring presence of God equally involved in the worship and prayer and in the troubles between his friend Lugne and his wife.  Her suggestion that she abandon her husband to become a nun is something Columba prays against.  Such a course of action Columba views as contrary to nature, contrary to God’s will.  But Columba keeps vigil in prayer, his friend’s wife changes her mind, and all is restored to equilibrium.  We sense that Columba smiles at this with amusement as well as just relief.

Is it too much to argue that in choosing to travel by foot unless in exceptional circumstances Aidan was more in touch with God’s rhythm?  Certainly they were more open to chance encounters, but also by travelling more slowly he and his companions could rehearse the Scriptures as they went.  His choice of Lindisfarne for their home protected their solitude and put them constantly in touch with the rhythm of the tide with its ebb and flow, even as a rhythm of prayer dominated their lives daily.  At Whitby Caedmon worked looking after the beasts in the stable.  It was there he retreated during a ceilidh feast because the harp passed from person to person was approaching him.  In his dream, a man stood beside him urging him to sing, addressing him by name.  Despite his protestations the man insisted he would sing especially for him.  “What should I sing about?” said Caedmon.  “Sing about the Creation of all things,” said the man.  And, as is possible in dreams, Caedmon immediately burst into song, verse after verse of praises to God the Creator.  When he awoke, the song was still with him and he could remember it perfectly.

If the man in his dream was God or His angel, then we should accept that God encouraged the Celts at least to focus yet again on the created order and on the One it pointed towards.  It also appeals to our sense of poetic justice that the Mighty God chooses to visit a stable with a miracle again.  It demonstrates His concern with the ordinary things of life.  That same ordinariness is still to be found in the Gaelic prayers and blessings preserved in the ‘Poems of the Western Highlanders’.  Listen to this one:

‘Be blessing, O God, my little cow,

and be blessing, O God, my intent;

O God, my partnership blessing thou

and my hands that to milking are sent’

Another one transfers God’s attention to the loom instead:

‘My Chief of generous heroes,

bless my loom and all things near to me,

Bless me in all my busy-ness,

keep me for life safe-dear to Thee’

Could there be a more appropriate prayer for us today than that? that God would bless all things near to us, and bless us in all busy-ness?

A third prayer asks God to cover our souls with the shadow of His wing even as we clothe our bodies.  The chief importance of this prayer is that it can be often remembered since we put clothes on our bodies every day.  Patrick’s breastplate prayer was often used in a similar way – other are Celtic prayers, and more modern Gaelic ones, associated with many every-day activities, laying a peat-fire, dressing, rocking a cradle, walking to work, rowing a boat, tilling the fields.  Each is a place to remember, to recollect God’s presence, to meet Him there.  God is to be met at every turn, but especially in the natural things, the elements that mediate His character.

For Brendan, about to begin his voyage, setting his face towards the sea is to put himself wholly at the mercy of God.  His prayer, and sense of being open to God, inter-acts with his excitement at the journey ahead with glowing descriptiveness.

‘Shall I take my tiny coracle across the wide, sparking ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven….. O Christ, will you help me on the wild waves?’

Without sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on, he was to throw himself ‘wholly on the King of kings,’ more properly and completely part of that rhythm, in an exhilaration of abandon that entranced as well as frightened him.  No wonder the call of the peregrinati, that call to wandering journeys which was a ways an ingredient in Celtic Christian culture fascinated and inspired so many!

For Columba, standing on a rock, gazing on the face of the sea, all his thoughts and hopes and prayers and memories and regrets break and crash on the rocks before him.

‘I hear the heaving waves chanting a tune to God in heaven ….

I hear the waves breaking, crashing on rocks,

like thunder in heaven…..

Contrition fills my heart as I hear the sea;

it chants my sins, sins too numerous to confess …

I watch the ebb and flow of the ocean tide;

it holds my secret, my mournful flight from Eire.’

Rhythm and music like silence are there already; it is for us to enter in.  St Paul says, ‘There is a rest that remains for the people of God.’ That sabbath of rest awaits our participation.

There is a lovely tale about a monk at Glendalough known for his holiness, a brother by the name of Moliny.  He fasted several days a week, and would never allow himself the indulgence of hearing music.  These practices were not his boast, but are pertinent to the story.  A young man with a harp arrived at the monastery, shared a meal with the brothers, and prayed for them.  Enquiring after Moliny he is directed to the church where        he began to play.  Moliny put wax in his ears to block out the sound. It melted to Moliny’s amazement.  Just then the young man scraped a small stone over the strings producing horrible screeching noises, and Moliny writhed in agony.  As suddenly, he played sweetly on the harp, throwing the stone away and Moliny was soothed, and began to feel greater joy than ever he had known before.

When he finished Moliny asked, “Are you then a devil sent to tempt me, or an angel sent to bless me?” “Judge that for yourself,” said the young man.  “When I scraped my harp with a stone, it made the noise of a devil, and when I played it with my fingers it made the sound of an angel.  Music, like food and drink, can be and agent of evil, or a source of goodness.” Then he got up and left.

From that time Moliny welcomed all musicians to the monastery to play, and gave up fasting extra days to the others, and his brothers noticed he became more gentle and kind from that moment on and even acquired a sense of humour.  He had more properly tuned in to the rhythm!

Meanwhile, let us return to Kevin who began the foundation at Glendalough a full generation before.  He probably has scarcely breathed – out of love for the bird and the eggs that would hatch in his hands.  He would look on prayerfully till the new generation could fly!

Care for the creatures, and authority over the elements.

It is as if the saints are reverting to a pre-existent rhythm, becoming part of the very song of creation itself or resuming the custodial role that Adam had over the creatures in the Garden.  Kevin holds himself very still and continues to pray and the blackbird thinks no more of it than if a tree supported the nest.

But Alistair Maclean says in ‘Hebridean Altars’

‘As the hand is made for holding and the eye for seeing Thou hast fashioned me for joy.’

He goes on to pray:

‘Share with me the vision that shall find it everywhere’ Adomnan tells a lovely story of Columba prophesying the coming of a storm-tossed crane from Ireland, which would fall exhausted on the shore.  One of the brothers he instructed to lift it tenderly when it arrived, and be its guestmaster in the house nearby, feeding and caring for it for three days before flying back to Ireland.  All of it happened as he foretold and Columba was able to commend the brother for “tending well the pilgrim guest.”

Cuthbert showed the sane concern for the eagle who brought it food to him and his companion when he told the boy to cut the fish in half quickly so the eagle could have its share.

These saints not only cared for the creatures, but had authority over them too when necessary.  Listen to Columba rebuking the water beast at Loch Ness; “You will go no further.  Do not touch the man; turn backward speedily.” At this the monster fled terrified in swift retreat as if being pulled by ropes!  What is not clear is whether the creature found itself pulled back and was terrified by the experience or whether Columba’s rebuke so frightened it that it was eager to get away!  When doors open, and gates do the same, we are clear that material things are not responding out of fear, but nonetheless submitting to the relentless authority of one empowered by the presence of Christ within.  He has authority over all nature, all matter, and is able to rebuke winds and waves and still them with only one word.  When the time for His passion comes, He chooses not to exercise that authority.

‘At his death no fire came upon his captors to burn them, no great flood rose to sweep them away, the earth did not open to swallow them up, the sky did not fall to crush them.’

He has the power to bring about any of these things.

One of the most remarkable pieces of Celtic poetry is the section of Patrick’s ‘Deer’s-cry’ known as the Rune of St Patrick.  The same authority is claimed on the name of Christ over the whole elemental realm and everything is ordered to conic to assist the pray-er.  None of them are seen as good or evil in themselves, but as Moliny discovered with the music of the harp can be made to serve good or evil.  Listen carefully to Patrick as he claims protection when his life and the future of his mission in Ireland are in danger:

‘At Tara, in this fateful hour, I place all heaven with its power, and the sun with its brightness, and the snow with its whiteness and the fire with all the strength it hath, and the lightening with its rapid wrath, and the winds with their swiftness along their path and the sea with its deepness, and the rocks with their steepness and the earth with its starkness, all these I place by God’s almighty help and grace between myself and the powers of darkness.’

Power, Presence and Poetry

Greek and Roman ways of thinking seemed to tend towards analysing and legislating, but in contrast the Celtic branch of the church always seemed predisposed to sense and experience, and awareness of natural surroundings, and of the immanence of God’s presence.

Columba standing on his rock observes:

‘I see the golden beaches, their sands sparkling;

I hear the joyous shrieks of the swooping gulls.

I hear the waves breaking, crashing on rocks,

like thunder in heaven …

Let me bless almighty God whose power extends over sea and land, whose angels watch over all …

Let me do my daily work, gathering seaweed, catching fish, giving food to the poor.

Let me say my daily prayers, sometimes chanting, sometimes quiet, always thanking God.’

Columba sent a copy of his best poem, ‘The Glories of Creation’ to the Bishop of Rome as a present.  In those days Rome was a powerful centre, but far from being the undisputed centre of power in church affairs.  The Bishop of Rome acknowledged the genius of the poem, but would not put it in the Vatican Library because it only made reference to the salvation wrought on Calvary in one verse.

Columba wrote another poem, his great ‘Redemption Hymn’ in response to this challenge, so we should be grateful for the criticism, perhaps, but is it is essential for every piece of Christian art to preach in a self-conscious way?

John Noble, teaching in London, recalls that when the Jesus movement was at its height there was a craze of putting stickers on everything.  Once, driving near a rally, he saw a tree with bright orange stickers plastered on to the low hanging leaves by some enthusiast.  If the tree couldn’t say ‘Jesus Saves’ by itself, then a sticker wasn’t going to help!

The Celtic prayers use ordinary things to express spiritual ideas, just as Jesus spoke in parables about sheep and coins and yeast, so easily will Columbanus pray, ‘do thou enrich my lantern with the light, I pray thee, Jesus mine’ and ask God’s affection to so fill our senses that it may be in us impossible of quenching by the many waters of this air and sea and land,’ and it is not surprising that they are particularly drawn to such images in scripture as that in Song of Solomon which says

‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it’

God cares enough to take an ordinary man like Caedmon who avoids the ceilidhs and teach him to sing the glory of creation, to wake to still know the wonder and sing a song beyond his learning.  This song finally led to his vocation to religious life.  While the Celtic monasteries fostered learning, reading writing of all kinds God also bypasses that which is learnt and gifts who He wills with the gift of wonder.  Both were to be enjoyed, and encouraged.  When Caedmon became one of the monks at Whitby he spent his time in studying the Scriptures and composing verses upon them so that these might be sung in churches for the better instruction of the people.  Caedmon’s poems were the first ever written in the English language as far as me know.

The descriptiveness of the Celtic writings speak vividly and pointedly, not in some flowery, self-indulgent way.  They are not abstract or sensational.  Hear again the description of the inside of the soul of a rich man without love, a wealthy man with no friends:

‘The darkest night, with neither moon nor stars, is like the brightest day compared with the darkness of this soul.  The coldest winter, with thick snow and hard ice, is like the warmest summer compared to the coldness of this soul.  The bleakest mountain, bare and swept by gales, is like the lushest meadow compared with the bleakness of this soul.’

Even Bede uses a powerful image when he describes Oswald’s impromptu cross being planted in the ground at Heavenfield before the battle that realised his sovereignty and a free course for the gospel.  The cross stood like a root out of dry ground, the Calvary tree, the Waymark for God’s highway.

Exodus 3 v 1:15

‘Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father‑in‑law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.  Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.  So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight ‑ why the bush does not burn up.”

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him within the bush, “Moses!  Moses!” And Moses said “Here I am.”

“Do not come any closer,” God said.  “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.  I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, ‑ the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzittes, Hivites the Jebusites.  And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.  So now, go.  I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

And God said, “I will be with you.  And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain”.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘the God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘what is His name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you”

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob – has sent me to you. This is my name for ever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation”.’

What I want to consider today is the nature of Christian experience, the nature of our encounter with God.  How can we tell when we’re having an encounter with God? It’s something that we need to know, because we live in a society where people are claiming to have numerous  encounters with God.

The classic example of that and perhaps the most marketed at the moment and hyped is David Ike who claims that he’s not only had an encounter with God but that he is the I AM himself.  Now that might for some of us that might seem a bit funny but lots of people are claiming to have experiences of God that don’t seem to bear a resemblance, at all to what we have regarded in the past, as being normative Christian experience.  And it’s happening with an increasing momentum.

And I in my little travels have had experiences of God which I’ve found out later weren’t experiences of God at all, in my walk as a Christian, and fortunately there have been those around me who have had sufficient enough sense to know the things of God who’ve been able to say what you’re experiencing is not God it is either yourself or it is a spiritual power which is not related to God at all. Also within my ministry there has been countless occasions where people have come and said “God has spoken to me” and when we sit down and actually examined what being said, God hasn’t spoken at all.  And they’ve had to come to terms that God hasn’t spoken.

Well those are not negative things, because we need to learn, we need to be able to understand, what it is, who God is, and to be able to receive and listen to His Voice.

There is another question involved in this.  Can we actually experience God, and can we know God?

That is a question that many people today would say is impossible.  The Know‑ability of God, we can’t actually know God and many ‘Believers’ who go through the ritual of worship, the ritual of religion, in their daily lives would act as if their knowledge of God didn’t make any difference to them.  So there is a content of religion but when it comes to actual living then it seems God doesn’t make any difference at all.

And I put myself in that category at times as well, that’s not just a criticism, I hate the word ‘nominal believers’ and ‘real believers’ because I’m not sure what the difference is sometimes;   at times I’m nominal and at times I’m a believer.

On the one hand, the Christian Faith confesses that

GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE.

God is far above human understanding.

So therefore knowledge of God can never be exhausted. It can never be complete.

God is outside of the limitations of our human experience.

If that wasn’t true, then we ourselves would be I AM.

We would be God, because if we knew everything about God we would be like God and we would be God.

One of the problems of the Reformation I believe, was a reaction to magic and superstition within the Catholic Church, and in reaction to that magic and superstition the Reformation took all the mystery out of the Christian Faith.   Everything was going to be systematically ordered so that every little dot and dash about God, there would be a Systematic Theology where we would be able to put God in order.  And the mystery went and when the mystery went the beauty went as well.  And if you look at some of the Reformation Churches you will be able to see what I mean, because they’re basically boring and dull.  The beauty went because everything was ordered.

One of the difficulties with Evangelicalism today, and I say this as one who owes a great deal to the Evangelical Tradition, is that it is stood in the tradition of the Reformation, and mystery has been removed again from a lot of religious belief.  So when people today are coming searching for God, the Evangelical Church has a ready‑made set of answers. To a certain extent the Catholic Church is in the same position, with Church tradition there is a ready‑made set of answers for every problem, for every situation and this is said to be on the basis that we have the Word of God or we have the Tradition of the Church.

When people come in seeking all they are presented with is

‑ ‘here’s the answers.’

There is no sense of ‘Encounter with God’

an encounter with the mystery of God,

the incomprehensible One

the one who is beyond us

the One who is over us

the one who is outside of our limitations

outside of our experience

- and people just end up disillusioned and disappointed, because what they encounter is not the Mystery of God, they encounter our understanding of God as He is being revealed to us.

We need to get the Mystery back into our Christianity, ‘we need the Mystery, we need that sense of Awe again, and for me any true Christian experience will involve that concept of Mystery.

We know – but we don’t know.

We have experienced ‑ but we haven’t experienced everything.

There are things we know about God ‑ but there’s an awful lot we don’t as well.

We know enough to have a relationship with Him, because He’s told us enough through His Image ‑ Jesus the Christ. We know that we can have a relationship with Him but we are constantly in a state of seeking, and when the Church stops seeking it starts decaying, because it goes in upon itself because it figures that it’s got all the answers. ‑ And the Incomprehensible One is reduced to the sum total of a communities understanding of what they think that He’s like.

I believe today that God is ‘busting our gut’ , He is putting us in a place where we are confused, not confused about a relationship with Him, but confused more and more about the nature of His relationship with us.  And I am not afraid and ashamed to be confused, and that doesn’t mean I don’t have a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, because I definitely do know I have that right relationship.

We are being called again  to be available to the Mystery of God.

Mystery in the Christian sense, means this, – that God has Revealed Himself but also that God has Concealed Himself

God has revealed Himself but also God has concealed Hi

So when we have an encounter of God it will embrace that sense of Mystery.  There will be things that we know and there will be enough to put us in a relationship with God but there will be things that we don’t know as well.

Now Contemplative Prayer, is entering into the concealed side of God.  It is entering into the hidden side of God, and the reason why the Church is so spiritually dry is that it doesn’t know how to enter into the hidden part of God. Because it is happy with the revealed part of God, ‘oh we’ve got it now, right!’ You do this and you do it that way, you do that and you do it this way, and you do that, and you do this, and these are the answers ‑ full stop.  Well people are sick of it.

Contemplative Prayer, is entering into the Hidden‑ness of God, it’s entering into the Mystery of God.  And this will involve awareness of our own small-ness.  It will involve an awareness of our mortality, it will involve an awareness of our sinfulness.

To illustrate this from Moses, because Moses knew what this meant.

There he is tending his flock in the desert, he’s not really in a real holy situation is he he’s just going around the ordinary business of his life.  And part of the divine conceit of Christians is the connection that they make between apparently mundane events in their life and the great themes of history.  Here we are in the ordinariness of our lives experiencing God and this is going to have a great effect on other people, ‑ well it’s true.  ‘Cos there was Moses tending his sheep just doing his job in an ordinary situation, and God spoke to him.

The thing about the burning bush you know, in the desert bushes would burn because it would get hot and they’d burn and they’d burn themselves out.  So here’s Moses sort of thinking this bush is not burning, it’s burning but it’s not going out, I’ll just go and have a look.  And often God catches us in our lives unawares.  When we are not getting seriously religious He catches us out and we are in a situation and we think we’ll just have another look and we hear God.  And God speaks.

And God always calls us by name, and He called Moses, “Moses, Moses” because when God speaks there is always a sense of personhood for us a sense of dignity.  And when people sit cringing in churches in fear, they haven’t understood the Nature of Christian Experience.  When they sit in a servile attitude towards God they haven’t understood the Nature of Christian Experience, because when God speaks He calls us by name and it gives us dignity and it gives us a sense of worth. ‑ But it also makes us afraid.  And it says that Moses fell on the ground ‘cos he couldn’t cope with looking at God.

When we’re faced with the Mystery of God, and here was Moses faced with the Mystery of God there was a Word revealed to him.  ‘Moses, Moses it’s God speaking to you’ but he didn’t know the whole picture he collapsed in fear.  He has an awareness of his smallness, ‑ his sinfulness.  And if we are to get anywhere in prayer it’s as we approach the Mystery of God we’re going to face our own sense of small-ness, our own sense of mortality, and our own sense of sinfulness; and many people turn back at this point.  They stop all together.  They pack in, they can’t cope.

Any true Christian experience of God, will involve Mystery, it will involve Revelation, God speaking and it will involve a response in ourselves, where at the same time we have a sense of worth and dignity, at the same time we have a sense of our worthlessness, our sinfulness, and our smallness before God.  And any true Christian experience will have those two things in it, and I’m convinced of that and if one of them is absent then something is wrong.

So at the same time that we feel affirmed by God, we will feel worthless in our selves.

Jurgen Moultman ‑ The Crucified God

‘Confrontation with the Cross or the Glory of God, and ‘Glory’ in Biblical terms means the Nature and Presence of God, is not positive or constructive but in the first instance is critical and destructive It does not bring men into better harmony with himself or his environment, but it brings him into contradiction with himself and his environment. It does not create a home for him, but makes him homeless and rootless, and liberates him to follow Christ who is homeless and rootless.’

Any genuine experience of God will give us a sense of our own worthlessness, and I am putting that in the context of God giving us dignity as well.

One of the things that is said today about the experience of God that it gives us a sense of our harmony with the world. Our harmony with each other, that underneath the fabric of everything there is a great harmony going on, everything is OK. But the Christian concept of experience is, when we’re confronted with God, the only thing that we are aware of that has unity, is God Himself.

In ourselves what we are faced with, is the reality which is in the created order,

which  is dis‑unity;

which  is chaos;

which  is uncertainty;

which  is mortality;

which  is to do with decay;

which  is to do with division.

We need to be seeing more in our own lives, and in the lives of people who are saying that they are having an experience of God, a deeper sense of our own sinfulness.  And that seems to be absent not only inside the Church but outside the Church, as well.

So genuine Christian experience will involve confrontation with the Mystery of God, it will involve an awareness of our own sinfulness as well as our own worth in God’s sight, and the other thing that it will involve is disclosure ‑ God will speak about Himself.  God will say something about Himself which will have meaning and purpose to us, it will be something that we will reasonably be able to understand, it is something that will come into our experience and it’s something that we will act upon.

And when God speaks there is always continuity.  When God spoke to Moses He said “I am the God of your Fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God was making His Credentials known.  You’re not experiencing here somebody who’s unknown to your community, you’re not experiencing here somebody who’s different to who you’ve ever experienced before.

‘I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, and I am the God of Jacob’

God always speaks with continuity, and when God speaks he never contradicts himself. He never contradicts Himself. So genuine Christian Experience while it involves hearing God, hearing a Word from God, it will be a Word that doesn’t contradict the ways in which God speaks to us, and God has spoken to us through Scripture, and through the community of the Church.  So if anybody says ‘God has told me to go and fall in love with Mrs Mopsy, er goodbye Linda’ then there’s obviously something wrong with my hearing of God.

GOD WILL NEVER CONTRADICT HIMSELF.

If we love the Lord we will want to be near and‑as close to His Word as possible.  And His Word is primarily expressed in the person of Jesus Christ whose presence is communicated to us through the Holy Spirit.  And we have the memory of the Christian People encapsulated in the Holy Scriptures, and we have the living memory, the continuous memory of the people of God’s Word encapsulated in the living community today.

So in order to stay close to God, to continue experiencing God, then we’ll want to be spending time to be near the Lord Jesus, to experience Him in the Word of God through the Holy Spirit, and to experience Him in the community of Christ today, again through the Holy Spirit.

So there are no Lone Rangers and there are no people coming in to the community with new revelation, it keeps us from being subjective.  And the reason that I brought the community in is, because with the Scriptures we have a great gift from God as to how we shall live.

But sometimes people come and say ‘this is not in the Scriptures how do I do this?’ What they are wanting to do is not something amoral, its just a question they have in relationship to their lives which is not contained in the Scriptures.  And so they come to the community and they say will you discern with me, in the context of the Scriptures, in the Presence of Jesus, communicated to us through the Holy Spirit, and in our living tradition that we have together, can you discern with me what God is saying to me at this point in time?   And I think that’s right.

That’s why when we talk about community we’re talking about something that has to be a living entity.  Not just something that we pay lip‑service to.

So our Christian Experience will involve Mystery, will involve Revelation, ‑ God speaking to us a Word, and our Christian Experience will also be reasonable.

I hate it when people come and say to me “You know I’ve had a Word but I don’t know what it means’. and I’ll say, “Go back and find out what it means and then come back and tell us.” or somebody gives you a picture or some sort of word and you’re just mystified by it.  Well the Word of God that comes to us is reasonable.  It doesn’t mean its rationable but it’s reasonable and we can actually ask God questions. And Moses did.  “Who are you?  Who shall I tell them that you are?”

And our Christian Experience, it is to be authentic will always be reasonable.  We can say to God ‑ “When you have said this to me when You have spoken what do You mean?’ “What do You mean God?” “What do you mean Father?”

This is the Heart of Christian Meditation.  Christian Meditation is not meditating on yourself, it’s meditating on the Word of God.  It’s meditating on the Word of God Incarnate ‑ on Jesus Christ, and its meditating on the Word of God as it’s being expressed to us in the Scripture.  And we are meditating on something outside of ourselves, on Him who is other to us; and in that meditation we’re chewing‑over we’re asking God to confront us with Himself, and as He confronts us we’re asking Him questions.

Not from a place of studying this occasion but from a place of relationship.  “Father what is that mean? what are you saying? what does that mean to me?  how have I got to change in this situation? what do you want to do? what are you going to do with us?”

So Christian Meditation is not ‑ know yourself. It’s know your God.  But it will involve knowing yourself again.  This is a paradox that starts with the Lord, it starts with God Himself.

So our Christian experience of God will be reasonable, and it will also be experiential, we will experience God.  When we are confronted with the Mystery of God; when we hear the Word from God; when we can take it into our understanding, it becomes part of our hearts, because Christianity is not just about thinking, it is about having a change of heart. It will change our behaviour; it will change the way we see things; and for poor Moses, it was going to change an awful lot.  Because he was going to go from being a shepherd of sheep, to going to face one of the Tyrants one of the Totalitarian Leaders of his day.

Now rationally that’s absurd isn’t it?

But it was still reasonable to Moses.  Because the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob said “I’ll go with you”. so he said ‘well this is reasonable’ even though I don’t think I can cope, it’s reasonable.  It’s irrational from human point of view, from that point of view, but its reasonable.

And any true Christian Experience, and I’m talking about experience in this context now, will always lead us to the people who are crying out for God.  That includes ourselves it will always lead us in that direction.  So Christian Experience will always lead us to other people, it will never just turn us in on ourselves.

It will always lead us to want to be in a situation where as a response to God we can be with other people, who are crying out for Him.  And when God spoke to Moses He said, “By the way the reason I’m calling you is because I HAVE HEARD the call of my people who are oppressed and I want you to go” and our experience of God will always put us at odds with our culture.  Because the other thing that God said to Moses “‑ but you’re going to have a terrible time with Pharaoh.” You’re going to have a bad time.

And if we are truly experiencing the Mystery of God as He is being revealed to us in Jesus, then it should be leading us to being at variance with our culture.  We should be in trouble there should be different times in our Christian Lives where we’re in trouble.  And if you’ve never been in trouble you need to be thinking about who you’re experiencing.  And I don’t mean that on a grand scale, I don’t mean that ‑ because I’ve not been called to Pharaoh ‑ I mean that on a small scale, when you’re standing up either for yourself in your Christian Experience with other people and it brings you into variance it brings you into odds with the established order.

We’re not in trouble enough.

I said to Andy last night‑ “I’m fed up I feel as if my life doesn’t make any difference to anything, I need to be in trouble”.  And that’s not because I want to be a Hero; ‘cos I don’t, ‘cos I’m scared; but I’m more scared by what I see happening outside than I am scared of the trouble, and I keep saying to the Lord “put us where the trouble is”.

I think we’ve lost the sense of Mystery and we’ve reduced God to a set of manageable propositions.  We’ve got it all sussed.  And what does God do?  He makes himself ‑ Absent. Because He’s not actually Present in our own suppositions. So we’ll start coining out of ourselves and reaching out more for Him.

And the other thing we’ve elevated Reason and Experience above Revelation.  I cannot cope when people say they are Bible‑believing Christians, because I don’t know what they are going to say; and it bothers me.  Because I actually love the Word of God.  Here’s another paradox for you. Because I’ve met a lot of people who’ve said they’re Bible‑believing Christians who when it comes to it don’t accept half the things in the Word of God because they’ve subjected the Word of God to their experience.  And we’ve a constant conflict in the Church at the moment between Reason and Experience.

Some people say it’s unreasonable to think that we can experience God in a dynamic, spiritual, supernatural way. So we shouldn’t expect that; and other people say God is the experience of dynamic, supernatural experience.  And there is this kind of reaction going on, and both of them usually come from a Bible‑believing point of view, and what happens with the ones who start from, we don’t accept the supernatural is that they end up in a kind of duff intellectualism. And the ones that say they don’t accept that everything comes from experience; they get deceived by all kinds of things, because they experience all kinds of spiritual experiences from outside the nature of God as well.

We need the two to come together.

I saw a man on the television the other night who was a Bible‑believing Christian, and he was talking about how to get rid of the ‘Niggers’ who were dirtying‑up the town. And he gave a real rational explanation from the Bible why the ‘Nigger’ was less than him and how he was actually, because of his love for God, doing the ‘Nigger’ a favour.  We live in our limited understanding of Scripture.

Our experience of God is bigger than, our own limited experience of, our own limited understanding of the Revelation of God through the Scripture or even through the tradition of the Church.

Many people are turning away now from any hope of having any experience of the God of Jesus Christ.  I often ask myself the question;

“What do people who have rejected Christianity really believe about  God?”

“What’s their   I AM ?

“How does their faith affect the way in which they understand the meaning and purpose of human existence?”

“What is their answer to our question the ever present question of human heart which is ‑ Who am I?”

“What is their answer?”.

And I would suggest that there are four current ideas about the nature of God that are believed and accepted either actively or passively in our Society.  And basically they are all variants of the same idea.

The first one is ‑ God is a good idea.

God is a good idea, as a teenager my pop hero was John Lennon, I loved John Lennon, especially after he’d left the Beatles, and one of my favourite songs had a line in it which I used to sing over and over again and I still do unconsciously it keeps coming up in my mind and I never understood it at the time.  It was this ‑

‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’

‑ and for many people God is just the Good Idea.  However while many people today no longer actually believe in God, in a way that makes any real difference to their lives the Idea of God is too good too let go of.

Religion gives to people a good feeling, a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort, a sense of meaning, and also at times a sense of moral responsibility.  The leading and perhaps The most well known exponent of this view is the Reverend Don Cupitt.  He is the Dean of Emmanuel College Cambridge a priest, he’s the guy who did ‘The Sea of Faith Series’.  Now he’s been notorious for arguing that ‘God has no objective, out‑there, existence; yet remains valid as a personified, religious ideal, who has supreme authority in our lives and shows us the way to true self‑hood.’

What he seems to be saying is that God can exist nowhere but in our minds.  Nowhere but in our minds.. God has no existence of his own, he is merely the projection of our own imagination.  The sum total of our own values, our own desire for meaning and purpose,

God is a Concept.

but He’s a nice concept and it’s worth keeping Him, let’s not get rid of Him let’s keep him. ‘Cos Cupitt says it makes him feel good.  The notion of ‘God as a Good Idea’ is a religion about feeling, it makes us feel good and listen this is so true in the lives of a lot of ordinary people, and I tell you this as a parish priest.

I used to go down to a pub with a mate and meet a woman in there who used to say “I love God” “I love God” every time I saw her she said it.  I used to say “what do you mean about God?” “I don’t know I just feel Him I just love Him” well there’s no content, no reason to it.  There was nothing in her experience which suggested that there was no revelation in her life, there was just a feeling.  A good idea.

The concept that God is a Good Idea, doesn’t lead to a concept of Mystery in God, it leads to a concept of Mystification.  You can say what you like about God as long as it feels good.

“Well I feel good about God and I’m sick of you and I’m going to kill you”

It mystifies God and what it basically says at the end of the day is we can’t know anything about God.  God is just a projection of our own imagination.  God we create in our own image.

I read an article on Cupitt recently in the Times and one the guys said to him, “what do you do when you pray?” “Who are you praying to?” because Cupitt uses Christian terms all the time, he talks about God and he talks about Jesus, and the guy said “Who do you pray to?” and this is what he said,

“I see prayer as rather more like meditation, I take the idea of God as something like a guiding, spiritual, ideal, that you use to orient your life by”

So he gets a picture in his own mind of his own idea about God and starts thinking about that.

God symbolises the goal of spiritual life, prayer is a way of thinking about oneself. What one lives by and what direction one’s life goes by.  If we thought of prayer as being literally talking to a being out there it would be pagan and totally unchristian.

Now he’s an active guy he’s a militant ‘God is a Good Idea’ man but those ideas have seeped into Society and seeped into the Church.  And sometimes we fall into this trap of just thinking that God’s just a good idea.  It is only when we come across real sort of points of stress in our lives that we’ve got to put the idea to the test.

A Bishop recently was asked, who holds this view, “what are you doing when you’re sitting with somebody who’s bereaved and you are praying for them?” and he says “Well I’m being with them.” and lie was asked “Well what are you offering them?” and he said “Well I can’t offer them anything except to be with them.”

Well it’s not good enough!

If God is just a Good Idea, then I don’t want any part of it!

He’s not an original thinker ‑ Cupitt.

One of the things that we make the mistake of today is to think everything is modern, even the New Age is not modern. It’s old, I don’t know if any of you are aware of the Philosopher Rousseau, he was one of the guys responsible for the thinking that went into the French Revolution.  He said he’d made a great discovery, this is what he said,

“The human spirit‑ no longer orbits around God as a centre, but around mankind itself.”

Now he was an original thinker, at the time in his day because that sent shock waves right through the Christian World.  Whether people agreed with Christianity or not whether they were believers or not, Christianity provided for people some objectivity God was the one which people orbited around.

And Rousseau said ‘We need to change that’ and ‘that He’d discovered that man was free and good, and therefore he was able to make his own laws as an expression of the common will and such laws should be regarded as absolute, holy, and inviable,’ and Rousseau believed that if man could see himself in that new light as revolving around himself, then there would be a perfect society; a paradise on earth.

And what happened was the French Revolution, which was a blood‑bath.

Cupitt says that the Religion of Feeling should have as its leaders Artists and Poets, and the Artist will inspire us to think nice things about God.  But creativity has a double face, Adolf Hitler thought he was being very creative when he killed all the Jews, and he was motivated by the concept that Man is at the Centre of things, he should make his own laws he should choose his own way, and he should act upon that and do something concrete.  And Marx was the same.

If God doesn’t exist, then our salvation lies in ourselves,, and we should believe in progress. We should believe that man will evolve from his animal nature into a new man, we should believe this.  Communism has collapsed.  After millions and millions of people have been killed in the name of the new God ‑ which is basically man itself.

When I listen to Cupitt, I think he’s sickly, cos he’s sickly sweet and it’s a sweetness that’s bitter because you can see what it would do to other people if this was the major accepted idea of God in our society.  And I also feel that he’s dishonest because the next idea which is most prevalent in our society about the nature of God is that God is Dead, and he’s finished, and that is much more honest.

So the second one is God is dead

We can’t have any knowledge of God any more.

Our relationship with  God is finished.

We will have to go it alone.

The conclusions are the same, as for people who say that God is just a Good Idea, but I think people are more honest; and I’d much rather talk to somebody who was a definite unbeliever, than somebody who was saying they believed and then didn’t.

The third idea is that God is unknowable.

God exists but he’s unknowable.  This is another form of being Mystified, instead of Mystery.  God’s unknowable but He’s there.  Again talking to ordinary people, you ask. “Do you believe in God?”   “Yes, I believe in God”. And you know the person does. “but what does he mean to you?” “Well I don’t know because

‑ I don’t know him”.

‑ I don’t believe God can be known”.

‑ I don’t believe that He can be experienced”.

‑ I don’t believe that He can make a difference to my life”.

So whatever I say about God or tell you about God won’t be true.  Because really it will just be me guessing at what God is like.

The fourth idea which is steadily creeping into our Society’s consciousness, but that has been around for a long, long time is that, God is everything.

I am God.                    So I AM = I am.

And at the end of the day, they are both cancelled out and you have got nothing.  Because I am God in this idea which is called Pantheism.

Pantheism is not new, the Eastern Religions have been based upon a pantheistic idea of God, and Hinduism and Buddhism are older religions than Christianity itself.

If you examine Pantheism what you come up with is the same answer.  At the end of the day you haven’t got any God, because God is impersonal, therefore God is unknowable and what we are left with again, is a religion of feeling.

So prayer for a pantheist is entering into the unity which already exists, because ‘I AM GOD’, doing exercises that make me conscious of that unity.  So that I have a sense of One‑ness with that, which is already there and exists. we’re all Ohm‑ming together…

But pantheism is not new either.  It is creeping more and more into the belief images of our society.  You can see that in many of the movements that it gives birth to.

When there are thousands of babies being killed every year and it is never mentioned, and yet they are giving to Children in Need, and while I want them to get as much money as possible, and there are children not even being born to be in a place of need because they are not regarded as being worthy enough to be placed.  There is that duality in there.

Pantheism puts all values on the same foot, this bench has got as much value as a person.

Just to mention the New Age Stuff.

What is unique about the New Age is that it puts all these things together into one and gives religious language and religious meaning to them.

So God is unknowable ‑ so what? We can create God.

‑ We can say things about God because basically we are God.

‑ We are Good and we can say what we like.

‑ We can create our own laws,

‑ We can create our own image of God,

‑ We can create God in our own image

And we’ll all be happy together….. except if you disagree.

Because although there are no absolutes and we’re all one, if you disagree with it, then you’ll have to be put into a state of becoming part of, the Consciousness that Streams throughout us all;

in other words You’ll be killed.

And acceptance of the New Age leads to our Death.

So, we have come back to the beginning; God is a Mystery who is both revealed to us and concealed from us in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Through contemplative prayer we enter into the Mystery of Christ and discover Him as the I AM and rediscover the dignity of our humanity  I am because He has created and redeemed me.

John T. Skinner 1991

If you want to capture the idea of Celtic Monasticism in words, you’ll find that words themselves seem inadequate. I have struggled for weeks now to present the essence of this movement, and I find it no easier now than when I started.  Every word I choose has a sense of passion, of vitality, of enthusiasm, of intense dedication, and yet even these extravagant phrases fall short of catching the elusive nature of my subject.  To call the Celtic Church rich would be to create an image of financial wealth that, actually, it never enjoyed.  To call it poor would be to do injustice to the lasting treasures it endowed on all who encountered it. To even use the words monastic or monk conjure up images quite different, for most of us, than what really occurred. I am left with a sense of reaching for the right words, but finding them just beyond my grasp.  I’m afraid that this is exactly what happens when we try to dissect or analyze a living thing.

I’m sure many of us have had the experience of being in love.  We know that we’re in love, yet I think most of us would find it hard to say exactly why we love that person and not another.  For me, describing the Celtic Church is a bit like that.  I have come to know and love it, but sometimes, I can’t exactly say why.

What about this group of people can inspire us more than a thousand years after they breathed their last?  What are we looking for that we think these people can somehow give us? And, most importantly, what did they find that enabled them to leave home and family to bring the gospel to a dangerous, barbarian world?

I think that our own pilgrimage has brought us face to face with these saints of old, not merely because some of us are Celtic by descent, nor that we like hearing the old stories, much like fairy‑tales in some ways, but because we have come to feel deeply, that these Celtic Monks have something vital to say to the Church today, again facing a dangerous, barbarian world, no less in need of the Gospel than it was 1200 years ago.

Join with me in meeting these saints, and hopefully, touching their hearts.  This is to be a pilgrimage of the heart, entering a cloister of your own making, and preparing for the mission God will send you on.

And now:   In the eye of the Father who created us,

In the eye of the Son who purchased us,

In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed us,

Let us begin our journey ……..

Background and Organisation

Long before the Gospel ever made it’s way to Britain, Celtic people lived here and observed some traditions which made the spreading of the Gospel among them uniquely possible.

We know now that tremendous migration occurred among the Celts.  It was once thought that only great calamity such as famine or drought could move people from one place to another, but now we see that the Celts seemed to shift from one part of Celtic territory to another almost aimlessly.

This “aimless” wandering will play such a significant part of the later Celtic Mission that I think it worth mentioning now.  Also, the Celts maintained “bardic schools”, “Bards” being that class of the Druids who carried on the history, music, and general knowledge of the culture.  This learning was completely oral, and often took decades to complete.

The value of these schools in Ireland and Northern Britain was such that Celts from Gall, Spain, and Southern England would often send an oldest son to train there.  These schools and their dedication to learning was to be adopted by the Christianized Celts, and later became responsible for such works of art as the Books of Kells and Durrow, and the Lindisfarne Gospels.  It would also be responsible for preserving almost all that we know of the Classical World, by copying the texts of Greece and Rome, in addition to religious texts, and keeping these manuscripts safe during the tumultuous Middle Ages.

As I said, the learning in these schools in Pre‑Christian times was completely oral.  The Druids felt that it was sacrilegious to write anything down.  They felt that part of their souls would be captured if a written record existed.

Obviously, the modern descendants of the Celts have overcome this feeling, since some of them are the most prolific writers in the world.

Leadership is another aspect of Celtic Life that was adopted by the Early Celtic Church.

(Now, let me make one aside.  When I speak of Celtic Monasticism, or the Celtic Church, I am speaking of the same thing.  In the Celtic Christian world, every church was monastic.  The leadership was provided by abbots who were bishops, and hardly any distinction existed between the cloister and the church.  We’ll explore that more later, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t confusing anyone with my interchangeable use of the words church and monastery.)

If someone was the leader of a Celtic Village or tribal settlement, it was an indication that character, training, and performance had all come together in that individual. This means that a charismatic method was used to determine leadership.  In much the same way as Celtic warriors chose their leaders, that is, on the basis of actual performance in battle, the villages chose their judges and priests by their practical demonstrations of wisdom and insight.

When the Celtic Church first appeared, the value of this method became immediately apparent.  In a land without seminaries, and no cathedral schools yet built, only practical apprenticeships were available for the training of each new generation’s leaders.  This resulted in a repetition of our Lord’s own methods with His Disciples.

The Early Celtic Christian leaders often chose twelve recruits, and took them along on their Missions. Eventually, these each led their own missions, with twelve more disciples of their own.  This can result in very individualized “theologies”, since each church leader was trained by only one other leader, each with incomplete information.

In fact, there were tremendous differences of approach between all of the Celtic Missionaries, but apparently, and fortunately, a great deal of agreement about the essential truths of the Gospel.

Another comment may be helpful at this point. When we speak of the Celtic Church, or even a specific part of it, like the Early Irish Church, or the Early Northumbrian Church, it is very important not to think of them as we do our modern churches.

If I were to visit ten Anglican Churches on the same Sunday, I would hear virtually the same prayers, readings, and experience a very similar type of worship.  This is not to say that some churches aren’t more “alive” than others, only that the forms are usually quite similar.

On the other hand, from what we know of the Early Celtic Churches, there is no hint of uniformity about their services.  Often each local abbot would compose the prayers used for worship.  Often the whole liturgy for Communion would be changed and a new one adopted as the result of some itinerant pilgrims contribution.

Unfortunately, many of these prayers and liturgies are lost to us, and only their echoes are found in the liturgies of Celtic places in the Late Middle Ages.

The setting for all of this activity can be called Celtica. That is the name borrowed from Herodotus the Greek Historian who describes the vast expanse of Celtica.

At the time we are describing, Celtica consists of Southwestern Britain, Wales, Scotland, Northumbria, Ireland, Man, and Brittany.  Before their conquest by the Romans, the Celts occupied most of Europe north of Italy.  They stretched from Asia Minor, where the Gospel was first brought to Celts in Galatia (Galatia = home of the Galls; Galls = Celts) all the way west to the Atlantic Shores where the remnants of Celtic People still reside.

In all this area, there were only two Celtic language groups, one related to modern Irish, and the other related to modern Welsh, so many of these remote Celts could nevertheless communicate with each other.

As settlers came to Britain from Rome, they also brought their new‑found Faith.  We still don’t know for sure when the Gospel reached Britain in any substantial way, but we do know that it was very early in the life of the church.

By the year 314 AD, there were at least three Celtic British Bishops representing Britain at a Church Synod in Arles in France.  Such an early start for the Celtic Church helps explain some of its later uniquenesses.  At that time, for example, the Council of Nicea had not yet occurred.  This means that the “Great Age of Church Uniformity” had not yet begun.

In the early days of the Christian Church, faith was recognized by acts.  These acts could be acts of testimony, or evangelism, or service, or even martyrdom.  As the church grew in numeric strength, and even became “legal” under Constantine, these distinguishing acts were less and less significant.

Now, if we wanted to make sure someone was a Christian we had to get them to agree a formula describing their faith. I am not against the Creeds in their purest sense, but something grew out of this movement of defining Christianity that badly affected our Celtic friends back here in Britain.

After getting the whole church to agree to one doctrinal position, it was only a small jump to require identical practices as well as beliefs.  That is where the problems started for the Celtic Church.

The Celtic Controversy

For several hundred years, the Celtic Church had enjoyed great success in its mission to evangelize Northern Britain. The entire island of Britain had in some way been reached for the Gospel by the work of monks from Iona.  Exactly when Iona was first established as an outpost for Christianity is not known for certain, but its role from the time of Columba is surely known.

Columba was in self‑appointed exile from his homeland of Ireland, this coming about for variously described reasons, including penitence for a wrong, possibly murder, guilt for some undisclosed transaction, shaming his patrician family, or avoiding a dispute between leading families.  Whatever the actual reasons, Columba, also called Columbkille by the Irish, set out for The Isle of Iona in 563 with twelve travelling companions.  This was to be of great importance to the Northumbrian Church, since only sixty years later in 635, Aidan left the community in Iona to begin work in Northumbria, and consequently founded the Monastic Community at Lindisfarne where, as we all know he served as its first Abbot.

The connection to Iona and Ireland becomes slightly more significant when we consider the events that follow.  As I have said, the early Celtic Church was flourishing at a time when no other type of Christian movement had successfully reached Northern Britain.  When, in the seventh century, another missionary movement did reach Northumbria, and inevitable clash occurred.

While the Church in Britain had enjoyed its independence and distinctive character, the continental church had grown more and more structured.  When Rome instituted a mission to England, in 597, Augustine brought a very different concept of the church to Canterbury.  This church did not accept the possibility of the Celtic Church continuing to operate in its own sphere without coming under the authority and structure of the Roman organization.  This difficulty was not due to any doctrinal problem, but rather to some merely external observances.

In the three hundred years before this time, disputes had arisen over the correct date for Easter.  Since this is based on a calculation of the lunar year compared to the Solar year, different calculations will obtain different dates.  The method used by the Celtic Church was considered outmoded and unacceptable.  It only came to a head, as these things often do, when it affected a royal family.

As it happened, King Oswy of Northumbria was converted to Christianity through the ministry of Aidan, therefore keeping the Celtic Traditions and calendar, but his wife. Queen Eanfled, became a Christian through the mission of Paulinus, connected with Augustine’s Roman mission.  This left her celebrating the Christian feasts, particularly Easter, on the Roman schedule.

Bede the Venerable tells us.

“The Queen with her followers kept Easter as in Kent… When the King had ended the Lenten fast and was celebrating Easter, the Queen and her party continued in Lent, being only at Palm Sunday.”

This situation brought about a need for decisive action in a way that no previous attempts at conformity had done.  When a synod was called at Whitby, in 663, the conclusion was already established.  No regional church could set their own traditions above or beside the Universal Traditions of the Church.  From this moment, the fate of the Celtic Church was truly decided.  All churches were required to come into conformity with the representatives of Rome at Canterbury, and all liturgies and calendars were to conform as well.

This was legislated in 663, but as much as 500 years would pass before most traces of the Celtic Church were erased. Why cause such a furore over such an insignificant thing as a date?  Well, the answer goes much deeper than when Easter was to be celebrated.

At its heart, the issue is one of hierarchy.  If the Celtic Church could claim independent decisions on its holidays, and perhaps on some other minor issues like appearance of its monks or choice of Liturgy, then perhaps it would rebel against the Church on weightier matters as well.  If, for example, the Roman Church levied a penalty of excommunication for some political allegiance, then a church un‑allied with Rome could ignore such a ban.

In fact, this very thing happened, or at least is reputed to have happened during the time of Robert the Bruce.  All Scotland was declared excommunicated, and Robert’s coronation therefore invalid, when, from out of nowhere Celtic monks and priests came forward to offer consecration for Robert’s Crown, and Communion for his people.  This strongly encouraged the Scottish people in their struggle for independence.

In many parts of Celtic Britain, the Monks and Abbots simply ignored these new orders from Rome, but eventually all Britain was brought into a measure of compliance one way or another.  One of the ways chosen was both spiritually and politically expedient.  All of the sites of Celtic Monasteries were eventually offered to other monastic groups, such as monks from Cluny, many Benedictine Houses, Cistercians, Augustinians, and others.  This created the appearance of supporting the monastic work of these places, but served to displace the Celtic Traditions responsible for establishing the work.

The factor ignored in any legislating of spirituality is that living things reproduce.  It is precisely because the Celtic monks embodied a vital aspect of Christianity that we are still aware of their work and ministry.  Many people would like to focus only on the ways that these primitive Christians differed from the rest of the Church in problematic ways, but I would rather learn about the ways that led them to Life.

We could spend much time on some of their peculiar observances, for example that many Celtic clerics were not celibate, but lived in monastic community with their wives and children.  But let us rather look at the style of life and devotion chosen by these peculiar people.

Life in a Celtic Monastery.

If you were to find yourself somehow transported back to the seventh century here in Northumbria, you might try to find a monastery, but you had better learn what to look for.

To start out, it is likely that there were few stone buildings in Northumbria at that time, so looking for a modern “ancient” abbey would probably get you nowhere.  Even castles were mostly made of wood and daubed with mud at that time.  To find a stone church or abbey you might have to go as far south as York.  However, you could ask anyone along the Great Coastal Road (that’s the A1) where to find some Christian monks, and you would undoubtedly be directed to the new settlement at Lindisfarne.

Arriving on Holy Island, yes it already had that name as well, you would locate the monastery as a small circle of wooden huts with a larger rectangular building at one end. This building would serve as chapel and gathering hall, until such time as a larger, more permanent building could be erected.  Each monk lived in their own hut, or cell, more like hermits in a group than brothers in a family.

This contributed to each monks need for solitude and privacy, but unlike hermits, gave the opportunity for close interaction at the Hours, and at meal times, some of which were held in common.

Very scant information exists as to the nature of the Monastic day at this time.  We know, for example that the Hours were observed by Celtic Christians, and that all participate fully in the observances of these Hours, but we do not know what prayers or texts were used.  This is a sad loss, since the scraps of information we do have, and the traces of Celtic prayers surviving in adapted form in Ireland and The Highlands have been a source of great blessing to anyone who encounters them. The original Office must have been an inspiring work indeed!

These Daily Offices were observed at least three, and possibly six times a day.  Since “business‑people” were excused from the rigors of attending Office, there was a recommendation to recite the prayers in their hearts, wherever their business took them.  The few traces and survivals of these prayers that we know about are found in books like the Carmina Gaedelica of Scotland, and some of the martyrologies of Irish monks, written in Old‑Irish. These are gradually being deciphered, so the future does at least hold the prospect of more information about them.

For the form and text of Holy Communion, we again rely on a few sources, none of them as old as we would like.  In the Book of Deer, and the Stowe Missal, we have shadows if not the substance of the Celtic Liturgy.  This liturgy has been translated in part by R C West for the SPCK, but so many prayers have been shortened or edited by him, that I think an entire translation still needs to be done.

For those of you who read Latin, the whole text of the Stowe Missal is found in F E Warren’s wonderful book, ‘The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church’.  I hope to translate some of these things myself, but it will be a few months, if not years, till I find the time.  Moving on from the formal to the informal, we may look at the lifestyle of a visitor or member of one of these communities.

The first thing I think of when I consider monasticism is the idea of obedience.  The whole concept of a monastery seems to imply submission to an abbot.  That further implies a rule to be followed, since no abbot could have the time to decide every monks activities individually.  Although we do not possess a Rule for Celtic Monks in Britain at the time of Lindisfarne’s founding, we do have several documents relating to Celtic Monastic Life in Ireland and on the Continent at about the same time.

These “Rules” and “Penitentials” describe not only the discipline expected of a full member, but also the attendant punishments for infractions.  I hope a brief example will suffice to show the intensity of commitment expected of these monks.

From the “Rule of Columbanus”: 7th Century Continental

Let the monks’ food be poor and taken in the evening, such as to avoid repletion, and their drink such as to avoid intoxication, so that it may both maintain Life and not harm (their souls): vegetables, beans, flour mixed with water, together with small bread of a loaf, lest the stomach be burdened and the mind confused.  For indeed those who desire eternal rewards must only consider usefulness and use.  Use of life must be moderated just as toil must be moderated, since this is true discretion, that the possibility of Spiritual progress may be kept with a temperance that punishes the flesh.  For if abstinence exceeds measure, it will be a vice and not a virtue; for virtue maintains and contains many goods. Therefore, we must fast daily, just as we must feed daily.

From the “Penitentials of Vinnian”:    7th Century Ireland

1:  If anyone has sinned by thought in his heart and immediately repents, he shall beat his breast and seek pardon from God, and so be whole.

3:  If, however, he has thought evil and intended to do it and has not been able to do it, since opportunity has failed him, it is the same sin but not the same penance; for example, if he intended fornication or murder, he has, by his intention, already committed the sin in his heart which he did not complete by a deed; but if he quickly does penance he can be helped. His penance is this: half a year he shall do penance on an allowance of bread and water, and he shall abstain from wine and meat for a whole year .

I hope these examples clarify the intensity of the monastic commitment.  The times were much as ours, in that morality was virtually nonexistent outside the church.

These penitentials go on to record the appropriate penances for theft, drunkenness, witchcraft, fornication, abortion, murder, greed, and the list goes on.   I think it amusing to reflect on the fact that these were punishments for erring monks!  I can only wonder what kinds of sins were committed by those with no standards!  It was a virtual necessity to hold up a moral standard, but even though the strictness find may not reveal mercy, we are told from many anecdotes of these early saints Lives’ that they indeed could show a great deal of mercy when circumstances indicated the need.

The Lessons We Can Learn

In such a brief outline.  I have been compelled to leave out far more than I could include.  I regret not knowing my audience better, in that I may have unintentionally told you many things you already know, and not told you the thing you need.  I hope that something here proves to be of value at least in stimulating your further inquiry into the lives and spirituality of our fathers and mothers in the Faith.  I guess that you’ll know many celtic saints and sites, as it were, first‑hand, since you live and work where these missions took place.  I envy you your proximity to these Holy places, but I share with you a proximity to the Most Holy Place.

If we learn only about the Faith of these early pilgrims, we will have missed the most essential part of their story. Their greatest value to me, is in looking with them toward Him who inspires us both.  Perhaps it is that peculiar aspect of Celtic Art that reminds me most of this need.

Most of you I’m sure have seen decorated Celtic Crosses. Some of them have been engraved with patterns called celtic knots, while others have figures from nature or the Gospels covering their surface.  The interesting thing to me, is that you can look at both at the same time.  That is, even when you “focus” on the decoration, you are always mindful that it is a cross.  When you “focus” on the cross, even the decoration reminds you that it is there.

I am asking you to do the same with the monks from our Celtic past.  As you look at these people, find the “focus” that permits you to look at Christ at the same time.  Then, we will have absorbed the reflection I think they wanted us to see.

Paul Cullity

Keene New Hampshire    USA

I was at a lecture on Thursday by Professor Atkinson of Sheffield, talking about Martin Luther, and he pointed out that Luther was, at that stage, the last in a series of people who’d really sought to serve the Lord and follow Him whatever the cost.  He instanced Wycliffe and Huss but he started with the Celtic missionaries here and in Europe, and I was encouraged by that.

Now we’ve got to start with some unavoidable history.  I’m afraid; but Christianity is an historical religion in the way that almost none other is.  They were always harking back to the great deeds God had done for their fathers; they had to rehearse them every year at various festivals; and I think it no bad thing that we should do the same.

As I see the Northumbrian Church, it consists of three strands, which we will dissect out for the moment, they all go back of course, to a single source – the Upper Room at Pentecost.  And if I carelessly talk about the ‘Celtic Church’ or the ‘Roman Church’ forgive me.  I don’t mean that; there is only one church – the Church of Jesus Christ.  Now the foundational church is the British church, and by British I mean the original inhabitants, the Celtic inhabitants of this land, as far as we’re concerned the first inhabitants, who were British.  So their country when it was incorporated into the Roman Empire was called Britannica.

- And, interestingly enough, Bradbruck studies on Northern Northumbrians in the present days has shown that the majority of them or the greatest percentage of their blood appears to be original British: this is where we all stem from.

Now excavations at the Hirschall, that’s Lord Hulme’s place at Coldstream, just up the road, have revealed graves; and when Prof. Cramp dug them, the earliest graves date from the Roman period (as you know archaeology is dated by bits of crockery that people have dropped), and there’s Roman pottery, Roman crockery round about.

But more interestingly, some of the graves have also got with the skeletons a white stone.  And in the lecture I listened to, she said this is usually assumed to indicate they were Christians.  Well we’ve explored this since, and it seems to me that the origin of that is in Revelation 2:17 where the Lord promises to the saints in Pergamum, a white stone, and that is the only thing of the various possibilities that makes the most sense, that that’s what they were doing.  You remember in Exodus that the angel said.  “I am going to go through the land of Egypt and I am going to kill all the first-born; but you Jews paint a bit of blood over your lintel,” and the angel passed by.  I think these early christians, when their dear one died they put a white stone in his hand, in fact, in the Isle of Man they have been found actually in their hands, so that the angel coming will say:”This is one for the resurrection.”

Which, of course, gives three interesting points:

The first is that there were Christians, here in the Muss just on the Tweed in the 2nd and 3rd century.

The second thing is that they had access to the book of Revelation, which is not the most obvious one that you buy when you’re going round; and, thirdly, that they had got pastors and teachers who explained it to them.  Now that I find very encouraging.

Now the other thing is that when the Anglo-Saxons came in, they found certain places, where there was a community of Christians, there was a church, (by the word ‘church’ I think I mean community rather than a building), and they called these places by a Latin word ‘Eccles’ which they’d only got access to through the people who lived here who of course would be British.  So you get Eccles in Berwickshire, you buy Eccles Cakes from Lancashire, you get Ecclestone, you get the name here and there, all over England and South Scotland.  This is a place where the pagans coming in recognised a community of Christians, and, as I say, we’ve got one not very far north of the Tweed, between here and Gorton. And it seems to me obvious that these Christians must have gossiped the Gospel.

We’re going to talk about the big names who evangelised this part of the world.  But some of the parts of England weren’t evangelised by big names.  I’m thinking particularly of Herefordshire, and that area.  But there was a church growing around the Anglo-Saxons, and a most recent historian said this can only be because the British Christians taught them about the Gospel.  The same must have applied,  I think, up here.

So here, then, we had the church, the universal church represented in Britain in the days of the Roman Empire, and there were two Councils of the whole church, one at Arles in 314, and one in Italy 40 years later, at which British Bishops were present, so here we are the foundational, what I call the ‘original Romano-British strand.’

Then, of course, as you will remember from school-days, the whole thing fell to pieces just after 400, 410 when the Goths captured Rome, and the Roman Empire disappeared.

But at that time, we have a little evidence of what’s going on in North England, I’d be stretching the definition of Northumbria a shade, but the important place to think of is Carlisle.  First is that in about 391 while the Roman Empire was still active a Christian went to Rome who became known as a bible-teacher and a commentator the first references to him by Augustine are commendatory, a chap by the name of Pelagius.  Later on, of course, he was named as a heretic because he emphasised the importance of Christian works.  But Pelagius is a Briton, we know that.  Pelagius it seems came from northwest Briton, the last historian I heard talk on him said, probably Carlisle.  So, in other words, you had here in this area a centre where people were being educated, and thinking.

And then, ten years later or thereby, we get the name of Ninian.  Ninian, who also goes to Rome, becomes ordained a Bishop and then comes back and sets out on a missionary enterprise to the Picts.  His base was in South Scotland.  Well, he eventually died in the great church at Whithorn in Galloway, but Peebles may also have been his centre.  But the interesting thing is his mission to the Picts: it wasn’t to South Scotland.  In other words South Scotland was already Christian.  This area didn’t need evangelising, he was going to a people beyond the frontiers.

A third name I want to mention to you is Patrick.  St Patrick, now here is the chap who above all you’ve got to read.  Rush out to the bookshops tomorrow, the only place I know you can get him is SPCK in Durham – The Confessions of St Patrick.  St Patrick is not the kind of person you’ve heard about, who goes about cursing rivers because there aren’t enough fish in them, or that sort of thing – that’s later fiction.  Patrick wrote his ‘Confessions’, which to me read like the prayer-partners’ letters from a missionary, in his story, the importance of his story being, of course, that the latest view is that he came from our area.  He came in fact probably from Greenhill, that area, just this side of the Cumbrian border.

Somewhere in the west, whether it be there, or Dumbarton, or South Wales, he is captured and taken at the age of sixteen to Ireland.  His father being a clergyman, his grandfather being a clergyman, this is a Romano-Briton.  And he’s captured.  Now, lets face it, he’s in the field, or he’s in the farmhouse, and the Irish raiders came, and he is whipped away to Ireland.  He doesn’t have time to pack his suitcase; he doesn’t have time to pick up his NIV; he’s whipped away to Ireland, and he’s there without any contacts, and he’s there for a number of years.  (I think it’s about seven.)

He said,  ‘Sometimes I prayed a hundred times a day and a hundred times a night.’ Here was a chap who at the age of sixteen had got it together! and then it was said to me, “your ship is waiting”‘.  What does he mean? – ‘it was said to me?’ – Here is a word spoken into his heart by God; it can have no other meaning.  So he sets out, and as one historian said ‘probably more by good luck than good judgement’.  We would not accept that.  He sets out and gets to port.  They refuse to get him on the boat; then they relent, he gets on the boat, and he gets over to – probably – Gaul and the people starve; they have no food.  One day, he says, “Today, the Lord is going to give us food.” Now, that’s going out on a limb!  Here’s a chap, in his early twenties by now, quite boldly saying ‘The Lord today is going to provide, even though he hasn’t had for the last fortnight,’ and, of course, shortly afterwards a herd of pigs runs across the track, and so they are into the roast pork.

So here as you read Patrick, his confessions, you will read the story of a godly young man who is prepared to go back to Ireland, back to the place he’s been a slave, to preach the gospel.

Bear that in mind, Ireland gets the Gospel if you like, from Northumberland.  We don’t know much else about the Romano-British Church but if you go on another 130 years a chap called Gildas is writing to the British people who are now mostly the Welsh people that got pushed sideways.  He ambassed them, he ambassed the kings first of all, but then he gets torn into the leaders of the church, for their worldliness, for their pride, for their this, that, and the other thing … but he never accuses them of a failure to evangelise, because as far as he’s concerned the whole country by this stage is Christian.

I won’t weary you with Gildas – its a very fascinating subject.

So by that time he’s writing, the Anglo-Saxons had come, probably not in big numbers, probably only about ten per cent of the population, that’s not a lot, probably taking over, rather like the Normans did, the positions of authority, and here in this part of the world probably doing it peacefully.

But of course they were pagans, and the influence of pagan overlords must have been strong, so we get to a situation where there are early Christian monuments in Tweed-dale in Gallowway in Cumbria but none in I?  Something had happened: the thing seems to have gone dead, whether due to the pressure of the pagan overlords or what it might have been we don’t know.

Now, having got over that bit, (that is what you call over the historical horizon, we’ve no great dates.) Now we’ve got into Bede’s time, and we know what we’re talking about with dates.

So that by the year 600 we have a British Church that’s more or less faded out here.  We’ve got Anglo-Saxon pagan overlords, and then there comes a great king, King Edwin, who defeats the existing king; (His family flee to Scotland.  Don’t forget that family in Scotland!) and, who becomes overlord of almost all of Britain except Kent.  So he sends to Kent for a princess as his wife, and her name is Ethelberg.  And when you come to put up your board of honour, your stained-glass windows, have one for Ethelberg.  She is a Christian princess and the condition laid down when he asked for her hand was that she must be allowed to practise her faith, and that she be allowed to have a chaplain, and Edwin, who was in a very expansive mood, said “and if I believe her I may become a Christian too.”

Which he does! and it’s interesting that the Pope writes to Ethelberg and says ‘Look, it’s your job to convert your husband.’ He doesn’t put it in exactly those words but he says ‘its your influence that’s so important’.  He sends her a present, a comb.  (Notice, he sends her an ordinary secular present he doesn’t send her relics) and neighbourly says ‘Here is a job you’ve got to do’ and she must have done that job well; because Edwin is converted.  If his wife at home had not been a good witness, he would not have listened to the preaching of her chaplain Paulinus.  So I think we should remember her name.

So Paulinus had come up as her chaplain.  He was one of the missionaries who had come from Rome, part of a second wave of missionaries with Augustine of Canterbury.  So you get the Roman Church coming in – the second Roman strand.

Paulinus goes round with the King.  The kings in those days rotated round their various estates, and there is an estate at Yeavering.  If you haven’t done it before, go on pilgrimage past Wooler, take the road marked Kirk Yetholm, eight – ten miles, resist the temptation to go northwards into Scotland, keep round the hill and you will see a great big stone monument.  On this site was Yeavering, one of the capital cities of Edwin.  And you will see a little sign as you pass Pallinsburg, (Paulinus’-burg).

Paulinus for thirty-six days catechised and baptised.  How many hundreds is that?  Where did he get them from?  You see there weren’t many Anglo-Saxons.  Somebody memorably said,  “There’s so little anglo-saxon pagan pottery that one au-pair girl could make and break it all in a week.” So they weren’t Anglo-Saxon they were Brits, and you notice the word ‘catechising’, and baptising?  I used to think that was preaching; I checked the words yesterday, and I was surprised,  I think he was saying to these people, “OK, you are Christians, you came to be Christians, what do you know about it?  Let’s hear if you know the basics of the Gospel,” and then if you did he’d baptise you, but he didn’t do anything more about it.  Because there were no churches built they were just baptised and left.  Then within five years Edwin was killed, Paulinus had gone back to Kent with the widow, and the whole thing had fallen into pieces in 633.

So we just start again and at this stage we remember the family in Scotland.  ’Among the Irish,’ says Bede, because remember there was an Irish colony in the west of Scotland Argyllshire today, Dalraida in the histories, with the religious capital on Iona, to which Columba had come sixty years before.  It was there that these people had fled; it was there that Oswald and his brothers were converted and baptised.  So they were in fact the first Northumbrians ever to be baptised.

So King Edwin dead, Oswald makes his thrust for the throne; and the crucial battle is at Heavenfield.  Take the military road from Hetton-on-the-Wall, the back road that follows the wall, and as you dip down into the north Tyne you will see a great cross, beside the road on the right hand side, behind it in a field a little church, St Oswald Green. Walk over that bit of ground – its not big – that’s where the little force of Northumbrians were, and the enemy was in great cover, Cadwallon was the leader, and ‘I was born to kill Saxons’ was his motto.

There we are, and Oswald must have had a bit of cold feet, anyway, the night before the battle Columba appears to him in a dream, and says,  “God has promised you the victory”.  I was disappointed, when I read that I thought surely Christ would appear to him, but I think I understand it.

He’d gone to Iona as a boy, 12 yrs old.  Columba had been dead for about 20 years.  He must have heard hundreds of stories about Columba.  Columba’s miracles, how held defeated the pagan king of the Picts etc etc.  He must have thought – Corr! He’d sat open mouthed, listening to all these stories.  In fact Columba’s life has been written by one of his successors a chap called Adomnan.  It’s in three bits: Prophetic Revelations, Miracles of Power and Angelic Visions.  (It’s a book well worth getting hold of: puts you back about £5.95).

So it was that Columba who appears to Oswald and says ‘God has promised you the victory’.  So Oswald gets his soldiers to dig a hole, make a cross; and he holds it there while they dig it in, and they promise to be baptised if they win – hedging their bets!  Well, he does win, and he comes to the throne and becomes, in fact, the Emperor of all Britain.

Let me read you some assessments, because now I want to tell you, having got the history mostly out of the way something about these people who formed our Northumbrian church.  Because now we’ve got the third strand – we had the Romano-British, the Roman, and now the Celtic strand coming in.

This is Bede: ‘But it need cause no surprise that the prayers of this king who now reigns with God should be acceptable to him, since when he was a king on earth he always used to work and pray fervently for the eternal kingdom.  It is said that Oswald often remained in prayer from the early hour of Lauds (about 2.00am) until dawn, and that, through his practise of constant prayer and thanksgiving to God, he always sat with his hands palm upwards on his knees.  It is also said, and has since become a proverb, that his life closed in prayer.’

He sat with his palms upwards on his knees.  Now, it is amusing to read the historians, they get themselves in an awful twist trying to work out what this means.  Something to do with Germanic paganism ‘on the knees’ all sorts of things.  About fifteen years ago, perhaps twenty years ago, when we got to know more about the work of the Holy Spirit.  I suddenly found that people in the prayer meeting were beginning to sit with their hands palm upward on their knees, as they entered into an openness to God to the Holy Spirit.  We thought it was new; Oswald had beaten us to it.

So I think we have got to grant that he was a Spirit-filled man.  Another thing about him, he sends to Iona for missionaries, he says, ‘I want a bishop.  I want people to preach the Gospel.’ Aidan is called, and while the Bishop ‘who was not yet fluent in the English language preached the gospel, it was most delightful to see King Oswald himself interpreting the Word of God to his Thanes and Leaders, for he himself had obtained perfect command of the scottish tongue during his long exile.  Henceforth many Scots arrived daily in Britain and proclaimed the Word of God with great devotion, in all the provinces of Oswald’s rule, while those of them who were in priests’ orders ministered the grace of baptism to those who believed.

Churches were built in several places, and the people flocked gladly to hear the Word of God, while the King, of his bounty, gave money and lands to establish monasteries.  And the English, both noble and simple, were instructed by their Scots teachers to observe a regular and disciplined life.’

So you get Oswald not only potentiating the Gospel by having Aidan in his entourage and so on, he causes things to happen, he translates, he gets involved in preaching, he’s wonderfully humble, we read, he has a life of prayer of generosity, he gets into evangelism and into church-founding and if you wander round the North of England you will find everywhere churches dedicated to Oswald, churches which I believe are ones that he originally founded, the ones in the north anyway.

Aidan, what about Aidan, the one who comes? this is the third strand, the Celtic strand.  He had the grace of discretion.  You may remember the story: When Oswald sent for a missionary they sent another chap who stuck it for a few months and then went back and said, “They’re so thick, those Northumbrians, they don’t want to listen.  They’re so resistant to the Gospel; it’s a devils lot.”

A quiet voice pipes up from the back, and says, “Perhaps dear brother, you’re giving them the strong meat of the Word instead of feeding them with milk as befits babes; you ought to be quiet and gracious.” They said, Who’s that? – Aidan?  Right you’re our Bishop.  You can go.

He had the grace of discretion, all who accompanied him, we read whether monks or laymen, had to engage in some form of study, – this is while on the way – reading the Scriptures, or learning the psalms.  So you get again this teaching strand coming in, now.  Anyone who was with him had got to read the Scripture, or learn the Psalms.  He cultivated peace and love, puritan humility.  He was above anger and greed, and despised pride and conceit.  This was written by Bede, remember, who belongs to the other school!  Him praising Aidan!  ‘He set himself to keep and teach the laws of God, and was diligent in study and prayer.  He used his priestly authority to check the proud and powerful.  He tenderly comforted the sick.  He relieved and protected the poor.  To sum up in brief what I have learned from those knew him, he took pains never to neglect anything that he had learned from the writings of the Apostles and Prophets and he set himself to carry them out with all his powers.’

Now he mentions the disagreement about the date of Easter: ‘but this in him I do approve, that in all that he breathed, worshipped and taught, his whole purpose was identical with our own, namely the redemption of the human race through the passion, resurrection and ascension to heaven of the man Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men.’

So that is a testimony from one of the Romans: He laboured diligently to cultivate that faith, piety and love that marks out God’s saints.

He had twelve disciples, and from them and these other Scots that we heard came daily down from Iona, the Gospel went out.  Those of you who tell you that England was converted by the work of St Augustine who landed in Thanet in 597, that’s the history of the propaganda of the victors.  That isn’t the case at all.  England was largely, three-quarters converted from Lindisfarne by the celtic missionaries in one flaming generation, under the guidance and authority and prayers of Aidan.

I will just mention two of these they were brothers actually.  There was Chad, Chad who went to Lichfield.  Truth, purity, humility, temperance and study are his.  He travelled on foot, as had his instructor Aidan, so that when he met anyone on the road, he could invite them to read the Gospel.  In fact, by this stage, a few years on, there is an archbishop who was so fed up with Chad insisting on walking that he physically lifted him up and plonked him on a horse and said, ‘Now ride, you can do more work that way.’

We read of Chad, he built a retired dwelling place not far from the church in which he could read and pray, privately or with seven or eight brothers.  And you again get this story, you get it in St John of Beverley, and in Chad and in Aidan, himself they build a small place, as you’ve got one at the bottom of the drive, (here at Old Bewick) where they could retreat quietly for prayer and meditation.

His brother,  Cedd, was Bishop in East Anglia, but he eventually came back, and they gave him land for a monastery at Lastingham near York, and he said, “I want to dedicate it to him.  Before we start I want to spend the whole of Lent in prayer and fasting on that bit of ground… to make sure all evil spirits are driven out … cleanse the site,” he said.

But these couple I have mentioned and others were trained very largely after Aidan’s death by Hilda.

Hilda is another name you’ve really got to remember.  Hilda was in the first baptisms at the time of Paulinus.  As a girl she lived in the world as a princess; and then she desired to emigrate to leave her home and all that she had, and live as a stranger for the Lord’s sake, in a monastery in Gaul.  Do you get this sense again.  I will emigrate.  I will go out, I will deliberately cut off myself from all the things that I count precious, in order that I can serve the Lord … ?

So she’s on her way to do that, she’s staying with her sister who’s a queen in East Anglia, when Aidan sends for her and says.  “Oy, I’ve got a mission for you in Northumbria.” So, Hilda never makes it to Gaul.  She comes back, and she’s given – you’ll be happy to know – in 647, land on the north side of the river Wear, I imagine, in which our own church, Enon, is situated at the moment.  From there she went to Hartlepool:        from Hartlepool she went to Whitby.

At Whitby she was known as the greatest, the most powerful woman in Europe.  Her counsel was sort by kings; and she trained people; six bishops were trained under her.  Some time ago there was a leading Christian wrote an article on ‘Leadership is Male’.  And in my reply printed in the magazine I said held been in Southumbria too long he’d forgotten Hilda.

One of the gifts she had was the gift of knowledge.  It can’t have been too rugged in her monastery, because they used to have what we would call Ceilidhs and passed around a harp and everybody in their turn sang a little song.  There was one chap a cow herder, he’d got no gifts in this nature and he used to sneak off when the harp was getting near him and go back to the byres.  And one night he was asleep in the byre having flunked the ceilidh, when God said to him “Sing,” and he said “I can’t sing”, and God put words into his mouth and they were the story of creation he versified it and the next day greatly ashamed he went and reported it to the powers to be, and they took him to Hilda and he sang this and she identified this is a gift God has given you teaching the history of the Old Testament.  And so they taught it to him and he turned it into verse, and spent the rest of his life producing poems that people could learn and sing – Caedmon.

The picture we get is a people who exhibited grace, humility, who spent much time in prayer and study and evangelism, and so it was until we get to 630 when Wilfred was a young man.  He goes to Lindisfarne he learns the psalms completely, by heart and he hears about Rome.  And he says, “I’d love to go to Rome.” No Northumbrian had ever been to Rome, apart from in chains, in Roman days.  So he and another person eventually get there, and of course he is just dazzled on the way in fact before he ever gets to Rome, in Gaul he is dazzled.  A Bishop there offers his niece in marriage and he will make him a Count and give him land if he would like to stop.  Bishops way back at home don’t offer you that sort of thing!

But there is a more serious aspect to it, he says, “I want to be considered to be orthodox, to be in, this is where it is all at.  Rome this is where the whole thing is together, I don’t want to be thought of as somebody lost over a corner of the world.” So he comes home and I’m sure his aim is to reform the celtic church, that was what he was trying to do.  He says “See the light, you’ve got your calculation of Easter wrong – I’ll explain to you mathematically.  Your haircut is out of date, the way you do your tonsure now-a-days is not chopping straight across, and so on.  But of course, he can’t persuade them or he persuades a few people.

Now I’ve got a picture that here you’ve got a keen little celtic church and the horrible great roman church down south pressurising it.

There was a tiny little roman church down south hanging on by their toe-nails in Kent, but far and away the powerful church in Britain was the Northumbrian church.

There weren’t in-come-rs pressurising them, there were people like Wilfred trying to reform them.  But of course getting orthodox, he wasn’t going to be consecrated Bishop by these people so he goes to Gaul and he spends eighty months in Gaul getting consecrated, and he has six bishops carrying him in a golden chair carrying him to his consecration, and its great stuff.

It was said his territory was more extensive than that of his king and his wealth was more than that of his king.  He was a very powerful man indeed and he didn’t like this being chopped down, so, we get an introduction of controversy.  And as we heard last week, there is a Synod of Whitby hosted by Hilda, and the king decides they will follow the roman ways.  Now I don’t really think this made a lot of difference to the celtic church.  Now if you have a congregation who is told when Easter is next year at such and such a time, we’re not worried who calculated it, we just say Easter is then.  I don’t think it mattered very much, OK the vicars haircut was different, I don’t think it made much difference in the churches and by this stage you have monasteries and churches.

There was a lot of contact still with Ireland, but eventually you get coming into Britain a new archbishop appointed from Rome.  Theodore of Tarsus.  Appointed at the age of sixty.  (By the way, he was from the east and his haircut was the wrong shape and he had to stay in Rome so it could grow and he could cut it the right way.) He walks to Britain at the age of sixty, and gets down to twenty years work in Britain.  A godly man and a scholar, who brought with him Hadrian the African, and they set things going and they got the church in England established systematically, they got councils, dioceses, and not all was bad.  The Roman strand was back again.  Something of the spontaneity was lost but there were some gains.

Lastly we come to Cuthbert and Bede, because they were the fruit of all these strands.  Cuthbert had been a celtic monk, in the celtic monastery of Melrose. and then at Ripon, back at Melrose and then at Lindisfarne.  In the roman obedience now, and a godly man, a man whose life was at one piece; whether he was being guestmaster at Ripon, or whether he was looking after the raw recruits at Melrose, or whether he was Abbot at Lindisfarne.  Then he went into solitary just off Holy Island, the little islet and then he went to the Farnes.  Not to give a sort of National Trust life watching the birds, but to fight the devil and he has to be dragged, the king and the archbishop have to go personally to beg him to become bishop.  He comes and in two years he’s out on the hills preaching the gospel in the villages.  Here you have a lovely man who has got all the strands together.

Then Bede himself, at the very end of his book, his history.

He gives a little bit of biography.

‘I was born in gangs of this monastery, ie between the Wear and the Tyne, and on reaching seven years of age my family entrusted me first to the most Reverend Abbot Benedict, and later to Abbot Chelforth, for my education.  I spent all the remainder of my life in this monastery and devoted myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures.  And while I observed the regular discipline and sung choir offices in church my chief delight has been in study, teaching and writing.  I was ordained deacon at the age of nineteen, priest at the age of thirty, from the time of my receiving the priesthood and to my fifty-ninth year I have worked both to my own benefit and to that of my brethren, to compile a short extract from the works of the Venerable Fathers on Holy Scripture and to comment on their meaning and interpretation.’

Bede was known to be the greatest scholar in Europe.  Bede’s Commentaries and books are found everywhere if you want the best manuscript of his History of English People it is in St Petersburg.  He would have said his great work was the commentaries on scriptures.

Monkwearmouth, Jarrow was the lighthouse of learning in Europe as the shadows came down.  Later on when you get Charlemagne, and the Carolinian Renaissance, it is to Northumbria that he sends for the scholar.  Alkian who is going to lead his renaissance.  So we’ve a lot to thank God for.

What are the things I notice? There is a whole-heartedness in their following Christ.  There is prayer, there is quiet retreats, bible reading, bible memorisation, a band of fellow disciples.  There is grace, humility, transparent honesty; and an awareness of heaven that I think we’ve lost.  Cuthbert went to Melrose knocked on the door and said he wanted to be a monk, because that night while he would have been keeping the sheep on the hills above the Leider river, he had seen a great light going up to heaven, and he found the next day that it was Aidan’s soul.  And he obviously thought if that’s the way it goes I want to be in on this.  When Hilda died, two people in different places who didn’t know she was dying, saw her soul sent to heaven with choirs of angels.  When Chad was at Litchfield, one of the junior members of the establishment saw a choir of angels land on his little chapel, and went round and said “what was that, Father?” He said, “Don’t tell anyone ’til I’m dead but next week they are going to come back for me.” You get this sense that they are not afraid of death, they are looking forward to glory.

If we look back to who you might call the ‘grandfather’ of the northumbrian church, Columba.  Columba knew he was going to die, he knew he was going to die that day, so what does he do? he gets on with the job he was doing which was copying out the scriptures.  The Thirty-fourth Psalm – this was what he was copying.

‘I will bless the Lord at all times

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.’

(What today when I’m dying)

‘My soul shall make her boast in the Lord

The hungry shall hear thereof, and be glad.

O magnify the Lord with me,

and let us exalt His Name together.

I sought the Lord and He heard me

and delivered me from all my fears.’

(and there’d been plenty of problems with the Picts, with whirlpools

and with sea monsters.)

‘They looked to him and were lightened and their faces were not ashamed, This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angels of the Lord encamps

around them that fear Him

and delivers them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good

Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him

O fear the Lord you His saints

for there is no want to them that fear Him

The young lambs do lack and suffer hunger

But they that seek the Lord

shall not want any good thing.’

He puts his pen down.  The next verse was going to be:

‘Come ye children, hearken unto me and I will teach you’

He’s not going to, he says the next verse is for my successor.  Now that, is his testimony.  ‘they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing’, and I think that’s great.  When Bede’s turn comes.  Bede wrote at the end of his History of English People,

‘I pray you good Jesus that as you have given me the grace to drink in with joy, the word that gives knowledge of you.  So in your goodness you’ll grant me, to come at length to yourself, the source of all wisdom, to stand before your face forever.’

As he was dying he also was busy on scripture he was translating the gospel of St John into Anglo-Saxon, and his stenographer said this, as there was still a bit to do.  “there is one more verse Master, can you manage it?” and he did.  As he lay dying he said “I long to see Christ my King in all His beauty.”

These are the people used by God to found the Northumbrian Church, of which we are members, and of whose faith we should follow.

Rex Gardner

One of the problems of communication is the lack of consistency in the agreed use and meaning of words. Typical of this is our use of the word ‘community.’

Community is an ‘in’ word at the present moment. We apply it to various groups of people and organisations which in previous times would have been ascribed a different title to indicate their function. A typical example of this is the ‘business community.’ One of the reasons for this is that ‘community’ embodies or implies certain characteristics that are felt to be typically absent in our functional modern lifestyle. It implies; belonging, human relationships and a common-ness of values. The use of the word has increased in our society in direct proportion to its felt absence in most people’s lives.

In its more general use, we can say that we all belong to, and participate in, a number of communities. For example, the neighbourhood, the workplace, companionship in social activities, political affiliations, the church etc. However, this may be true without being significant.
If we are to use community in any significant sense, it must be to express an intention or experience which defines more substantially ‘a way for living’ or even ‘a Rule of Life.’

In this seminar I intend to continue and expand our discussion of ‘a new monasticism’ with particular regard to the formation of monastic communities.

In our discussion we will need to remind ourselves occasionally of the ground we have already covered in our study of The Desert Fathers, Celtic Monasticism and the Early Northumbrian Church, and continue to draw lessons from our Fathers in the Faith.

Our aim is to address for ourselves the question that is the beginning of the monastic way;
‘how then shall we live’

We begin, by going back to the beginning!

Earlier, during our study of the Desert Fathers, we noted one of the reasons for the growth of monasticism was a reaction to the establishment of the church within society after the Emperor Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity in the 4C.

This acceptance, whilst providing an opportunity for the mission of the Church within the Empire, also had the adverse effect of ‘dulling’ the essential nature of the Christian gospel. Membership of the Christian community, which had previously been a call to ‘vulnerability in the world’ now offered ‘safety in the world’ and with it the possibility of political power, economic security and social status.

The Father’s creative subversion, their
simple and radical renunciation, cut
powerfully through all the subtleties
of religion, and reminded ordinary people
that behind the argumentation was the
simple gospel challenge:
“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine,
let him renounce himself and take up his cross
and follow me.”
William McNamara

The community in the desert was a prophetic reminder of the primitive and radical elements that remain the essential characteristics of the Kingdom of God. This challenging of the Church was not, however, a self cultivated, self appointed task.

Rather, they were aware of their OWN sense of failure in responding to Christ and in living the way of the cross. And so, the unconscious message, coming out of the desert, that resonated through the Church, calling her constantly to renewal, and encouraging fidelity to Christ in her mission to society, was only the indirect result of a community of believers, seeking themselves to persevere in the ‘way of Jesus.’

There are immediate lessons we can learn about the nature of the monastic community from the example of the Fathers.

1. Intentional Vulnerability
Community is a response to the call of Jesus to go the way of the cross. The early disciples when responding to his call had to separate themselves from what they had established in their lives. The way of the cross involves ‘a separation from the establishment.’
The way of the cross is ‘vulnerability in the world’ a journey towards ‘intentional vulnerability.’ By intentional, I mean; freely chosen.

But first, we must not spiritualise the way of the cross. For the first disciples, and for the desert fathers, the call to follow Jesus would involve real questions:
How long are we going to be away?
Do we take the family with us?
Who will look after the family when we are gone?
Do we give up our jobs, our business?
How are do we support ourselves?
How are we going to eat, or pay our taxes?
Where is all of this leading too?
HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?

For those of us who have sought ‘a new type of monasticism’ these questions and others like them have a demanding immediacy about them with no room for a theoretical response.

2. Intentional Uncertainty
They were called:
‘to go they knew not where, to find they knew not what.’

The way of the cross means the laying down of our own agendas, our own plans, our own expectations:

‘Christianity has to be disappointing,
precisely because it is not a mechanism
for accomplishing all our human ambitions
and aspirations; it is the mechanism for
subjecting all things to the will of God’
Simon Tugwell OP

The way of the cross involves a remaking of our hopes, and disappointments are an unavoidable part of the process. The first disciples were disappointed because Jesus turned out to be a different kind of Messiah to the one they had anticipated. They had to be disappointed, so they could get to know the ‘true’ Jesus and not the Jesus of their own expectations. Only a community that can bear disappointment with all the attendant feelings of disillusionment will become all that it is meant to be in God’s sight. The sooner the shock of disappointment and disillusionment comes to a community and an individual, the better it is for both. To avoid this ‘crisis of uncertainty’ will eventually lead to a collapse,

‘The man who fashions visionary ideal
of community, demands that it be realised
by God, by others and by himself.
He enters the community of Christians
with his demands, his own law, and judges
the brethren and himself accordingly.
He acts as if he is the creator of the
community, as if it is his dream which
holds the community together.
When things do not go his way,
he call the effort a failure.
When his ideal picture is destroyed, he
sees the community is going to smash.
So he becomes first an accuser of his
brethren, then God, and finally a
despairing accuser of himself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Intentional uncertainty does not mean the refusal to ask difficult questions. It is the refusal to provide our own answers, motivated by our desire to control situations that make us feel uncomfortable.

3. Intentional Uselessness

Those who have idealistic, romantic, wishful, illusionary notions about community eventually go on to destroy true community.

Community is a Gift of God.
‘Community is a terrible place.
A place where our limitations
and egoisms are revealed to us.
When we begin to live full time
with others we discover our
poverty and weakness, our
inability to get on with others.
Our mental and emotional blocks,
our affective and sexual disturbances,
our frustrations and jealousies…
and our hatred and desire to destroy.
Jean Vanier

Community uncovers our uselessness.

The sayings of the Desert Fathers were born out of their experience of community. Hence their constant calls to:
Humility instead of pride
Meekness instead of anger
Forgiveness instead of judging
Serving instead of dominating

These were not pious platitudes, but were values forged out of their experience of uselessness. For the Fathers, community was a gift of God.
Hence their constant warnings:

Don’t come here if you are running away from yourself.
Don’t come here with ambitions.
Don’t come here looking to be somebody. (a ministry a strategy)
Don’t come here to nurture bitterness.
Don’t come here with a preconceived plan.
Don’t come here with a list of expectations.

However, the paradox of intentionally embracing vulnerability, uncertainty and uselessness actually leads to the experience of true community. In vulnerability we find ourselves safe and secure in the love of God and with each other. In our uncertainty we transfer faith in ourselves to faith in God, which gives true hope; and in our uselessness we find our true worth and a sense of meaning and purpose linked to our vocation in Christ rather than limited to our self understanding.
We then find ourselves with a sense of belonging, for the heart of community is relationship and the fruit of community is hope.

From the heart of community, we move on to the physical and visible and physical expression of community.

As we discovered when looking at the life of the Desert Fathers, the community in the desert needed shelter, food and water, basic human necessities and the warmth of human relationship. They had to find very practical answers to the question: How then should we live?

As we noted, there was no one answer to the challenges they faced. Some chose to live alone, coming together to share a common meal, to share in Eucharist, and to share their hearts and the vocation to which they had been called. Others chose to live together under one roof, living a common life. Similarly, provision for their essential needs was worked out in different ways, Some worked for local farms or village industries; others made everyday goods they could trade or sell; while others were able to become self sufficient tilling their own land. There were also those who lived of the generosity of others, though that was rare.
The early monastic communities while united in there ultimate intentions and vocation were rich and diverse in their lifestyles. There is no reason for that not to be the case today. However, these outward expressions of community grow from the fact of their commitment to respond to the call of Christ…Come, Follow me.

We move on now, away from the desert and enlist the help of another seeker to address the question; How then shall we live.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the story of his life and in his writings has played a significant role in the development of my own thoughts. Those of you who know me well will recognise his name from my quoting of him alone! But, for any body unfamiliar with his story, here is the briefest outline.

‘….
Active in the ant-Hitler movement, the German Lutheran clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in 1943 and hanged by the Nazis at Flossenburg on 9th April 1945. When Hitler came to power in 1933, student chaplain and lecturer at the University in Berlin, Bonhoeffer joined the anti-Nazi pastors in the German ‘church struggle.’ In 1935 he was appointed head of the Confessing Church which was closed by the government in 1937. In 1939 he refused a job in the USA, safe from the impending European war. During World War 2 Bonhoeffer, forbidden to preach or publish, served as a double agent on Admiral Canaris’s military intelligence staff. Using his ecumenical contacts, especially in England, he sought in vain the British Government’s support for the anti-Hitler conspirators. His arrest in 1943 arose in part from his involvement in smuggling 14 Jews to Switzerland.
Although only 39 when he died, he left a rich legacy of books: Sanctorum Communio: Act and Being: The Cost of Discipleship: Life Together: as well as letters, papers, notes published after his death by his close friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge. These include: Letters and Papers from Prison: Ethics and six volumes of collected writings. A seminal thinker, Bonhoeffer refused to retreat from the harsh realities of his day. Bonhoeffer challenged Christian’s to reject complacent, undisciplined faith and life. His writings focussed on ‘Jesus Christ the man for others’ and on the nature of Christian community. In his prison letters, the most popular of his works, Bonhoeffer explored pathways of future Church renewal. Exposing the negative side of institutional religion, Bonhoeffer called for a mature faith in the God of weakness and suffering in a ‘world come of age.’ His ideas have sparked and shaped diverse movements including ecumenism: death of God theology: liberation theology: commentaries in Communist countries on the church without privileges:
Christian resistance to war and to oppressive political regimes: as well as traditional tributes to Christian discipleship, heroism and martyrdom.
…’ Ruth Zerner

With the Desert Fathers we have been challenged with the heart issues of community and by questions against which we can measure our own heart and intention.

With Bonhoeffer, we are challenged not only by the example of his life and the difficult questions and decisions asked or made, but also by concepts which are developed in his seminal thinking. These may well prove to be another pathway that will lead us to answering our question; ‘How then shall we live?’ in the present culture in which we live.

1. The Heretical Imperative
For many Christians, Bonhoeffer is regarded as having ‘heretical tendencies.’ Part of the reason for this, is that his most controversial thoughts, written in his Letters and Papers from Prison, were neither fully developed nor finished. We are often left to speculate at what he was actually trying to get at. Another reason for Bonhoeffer sometimes being regarded as heretical is his theological method; the way in which he thinks about God and his relationship to the world, forged out of the shattering experience and spiritual crisis following the rise of Hitler and National Socialism.

Sociologist, Peter Berger suggests there are main theological methods, or ways of thinking about God and his relationship with the world, or to put it another way…three ways of ‘doing theology.’ 1

a. The Reductive Method
b. The Deductive Method
c. The Inductive Method

The Reductive Method, is an attempt to make Christianity more relatable to the secular world and is prepared to define itself in terms of the current cultural situation. This attempt can at times be noble and genuine, but runs the very real risk of a radical reduction of the distinctive features of Christian belief. In Nazi Germany, Christians of all persuasions took this road, giving approval to Hitler’s initial programmes then slowly finding themselves trapped into accepting his ideology with little or know resistance.
The deductive method takes as its starting point scripture, tradition or dogma. It is prepared to engage with the world only in terms of its own arguments. Inevitably it finds its energies consumed reacting to those it sees as having abandoned a faithful adherence to its tenets. This is usually directed against those who hold a reductive position. In Germany the ‘confessing church’ feeling it was their duty to call the German Church back to the central truths of Christianity, as they understood them. As a result they engaged all their energies in this task, and as a result they did little to speak out against their real adversary, the Nazi regime and its leaders. With hindsight, at the end of the war, they were horrified by their own failure not to speak out or resist such a despotic regime, especially in its earliest stages of development.

The Inductive Method contrasts with both these approaches by insisting that the Word must be reflected on in the context of the world. Such a method involves risk because it involves dialogue rather than dogmatism. Yet, neither is it the dialogue of accommodation, to change ones understanding of reality with little serious thought or spiritual anguish.
The risk comes about because the ethics of true dialogue demand a genuine listening and a willingness to be converted to truth when it is spoken and recognised. Neither are there any guarantees that the dialogue may lead to the embrace of falsehood. Taking this risk is what Berger calls ‘the heretical imperative.’ Genuine heresy is dangerous and always claims to be truth; but any truth ready to challenge and overturn the prevailing view or dogma, will always run the risk of being suspected and persecuted for heresy.

Christians today need to take the risk of genuinely listening to secular thought. This has to be genuine listening and not that type of listening which is only waiting for the opportunity to get ones own view across.
Our mission today is to listen deeply before we speak, acknowledging we may not always at this stage on our journey have anything to say. The alternative is to become more and more irrelevant and listen only to the echo of our own voices. We must learn to listen ‘for God in the world.’

2. A World Come of Age

I would now like to give an example of the heretical imperative in a quotation from Bonhoeffer regarding ‘our true situation before God.’

‘God would have us know that we must live
as men who manage our lives without him.
The God who is with us is the God who
forsakes us. The God who allows us to
live in the world without the working
hypothesis of God is the God before whom
we stand continually. God lets himself be
pushed out of the world onto the cross.
He is weak and powerless in the world,
and this is the way, the only way in which
he is with us and helps us. Matt 8 v 7 makes
it quite clear that Christ helps us not by
virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue
of his weakness and suffering. The God
of the Bible wins power in the world by
virtue of his suffering
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Such a statement seems to run contrary to Jesus’ teaching about the Fatherhood of God, and the very real and continued presence with us of Jesus in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Also, it is quite clear from Bonhoeffers life and writings that the reality of the Fatherhood of God and the continued presence of Jesus were real to him throughout his life.

In this quotation, which comes from one of Bonhoeffers letters from prison, he is wrestling with and speaking aloud his thoughts about the nature of the presence of God, not in his personal experience, but in the experience of society in the world outside the Church.

Bonhoeffer recognised that the Church in his day was already living in a secular world, a world he described as ‘come of age.’ ( a theme later writers would adjust and call the Post Christian Society see Jacques Ellul New Demons)
Such a society would no longer have any interest in the claims of Christ or believe that Christianity had anything to contribute in this new society.
This was the place in which Christians now lived.

3. A Church without Privileges

Bonhoeffer was advocating that God would have us know that we must live our lives in a society that feels they can live their lives without any recourse to God. Which raises the question, how then shall we live? For Bonhoeffer we must follow the example of God as it has been revealed to us in Jesus; in intentional vulnerability. God has chosen in Jesus to be marginalised, to be pushed out, onto the cross. He has chosen to be regarded as useless towards helping men on their way to success. It is in this way, and only in this way that God’s power is revealed in the world.
It is only when men are faced with the stark reality of the crucifixion that they have the opportunity of resurrection.

Bonhoeffer therefore welcomed man’s rejection of religion, his ‘coming of age.’ Religion had concealed man’s true condition in the world; man had sought from religion a way of being strong in the world. Without religion to hide behind, man had the opportunity of meeting the true God revealed in Jesus.

Bonhoeffer therefore calls on the church to not resist or ridicule man’s coming of age, nor attempt to retain the position the Church once had in society in order to retain its privileges. This was a call to be a church without walls, a call to meet the Kingdom and the King in the streets; to confront man in the power of intentional vulnerability. As a starting point, he suggests the Church should give away all its property to those in need. As usual, those who applaud Bonhoeffers heart think he is going over the top when he starts getting practical!

Footnote: Bonhoeffers Church without privileges proved to be a life line to the church in the East coping with life in communist societies. In the West Bonhoeffer began the discussion of the Church in the Secular World and ‘ how then shall we live’ Secularisation proved to be one side of the coin and the concept of a post-Christian Society the vital other.

4. Jesus; A man for others

Without the need to defend the church, without the need to defend Jesus ( who doesn’t need defending) the church could join Jesus in his calling: to exist for others. Such a calling would involve standing against the vices of; power worship, envy and illusion as the roots of all evil.

5. A New Type of Monasticism

In Bonhoeffer, as in the Desert Fathers, we see an attempt to answer the question; ‘How then shall we live.’ Unlike the Fathers Bonhoeffers attempt to answer the question was cut short; his legacy to us was the call to evade the question by retreating into a religious hideout, a private religion.

‘the restoration of the church will surely come
only from a new type of monasticism
which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack
of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the
Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it
is time to gather men together to do this’
(Bonhoeffer a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick 14 Jan 1935 an extract

Footnote: This lecture was delivered 1991. It was the beginning of formulating a rule of community that eventually led to Availability and Intentional Vulnerability.
While Bonhoeffer was an architect of a new type of monasticism, he was not alone. Others voices, other experience was needed to develop a philosophy of new type of monasticism which became our own attempt to answer the question; ‘How then shall we live.’
NB I adjusted Peter Berger’s Heretical Imperative to emphasize the three theological perspectives. 1

In our studies of the Desert Fathers, we attempted to look at the ‘heart’ of monastic spirituality. To do so, we had to divorce ourselves from our contemporary understanding of monasticism, in all its outward expressions, to try not to miss the originality and vulnerability of these early Christians, who as pioneers had no foreknowledge as to how their lives would develop as they responded to what was, for them, ‘the call of God.’

Thomas Merton makes this clear in ‘The Wisdom of the Desert’:

“Though I might be expected to claim that men like this, (The Desert Fathers), could be found in some of our monasteries, I will not be so bold. With us it is often the case of men leaving the society of the ‘world’ in order to fit themselves into another kind of society, that of the religious family, which they enter. And, since we now have centuries of monasticism behind us, this puts the whole thing in a different light. The social norms of the monastic family are also apt to be ‘conventional’, and to live by them does not involve a leap into the void.”

(DISCUSS THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MONASTICISM) on tape

In this seminar when attempting to understand ‘a new monasticism’ our approach will be the same. Again, we will have to try and divorce ourselves from our contemporary images of the monastic life.

So in talking about a ‘new monasticism’ we are not talking about ‘joining’ a religious order, or the need for renewal of the ‘old’ monastic institutions.

What we are looking for is the ‘heart’ of monastic spirituality, and its application in our contemporary setting.

As Merton goes on to say;

“We cannot do exactly as they did” (The Desert Fathers THE CELTS!) “But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves; to discover our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build on earth the Kingdom of God.

“This is not the place to speculate what our great and mysterious vocation might involve” (a new monasticism?). “Let it suffice for me to say that we need to learn from these men of the C4 how to ignore prejudice, defy compulsion, and strike out fearlessly into the unknown.”

You may well ask at this point, (and some of you already have), why talk about, or use the term, Monasticism? Why not just talk about The Kingdom of God, or Discipleship.

The answer to that question is this:

The call to monasticism is a specific vocation!
Not all are called to the monastic life.

(DISCUSS) on tape.

The whole purpose of these seminars is to give people the opportunity to ‘test their vocation’. Now this may sound presumptions, and even a little bit cranky, but we already know that there are people here today, and others whom we are in contact with, who have sensed a ‘call of God’ on their lives, and are trying to make ‘sense’ of that call; because it is unlike anything they have experienced before!

…. Well, join the club!

There are also present today those of us who have responded to that ‘call’, and have made real choices to respond, and who have found ourselves in a christian context which defies definition and coherence, yet in some way only makes sense within the monastic tradition. And we are not alone.

William Stringfellow in his book, ‘An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land’, describes the characteristics of what he calls an ‘emerging confessing movement’ in Western Christianity:

“Dynamic and erratic, spontaneous and radical, audacious and immature, committed if not altogether coherent’, ecumenically open and often experimental, visible here and there, now and then, but unsettled institutionally. Almost Monastic in nature, but most of all… enacting a fearful hope for human life in society”

We firmly believe that here, in Northumbria, the Lord is touching Christians’ lives, in the same way as he touched the lives of those early believers whom we now call ‘The Desert Fathers’. Christians are experiencing a ‘divine concern’ regarding the nature of their Christianity, a call to repentance, a call to self denial, and a call to recognise and to resist evil. A call from the Lord, to ‘find a different way’ of being a Christian in the society that we live in.

THIS IS THE HEART OF THE NEW MONASTICISM

But there are also real dangers on our journey, of which we need to be aware.

There is an old proverb that says:

“Whenever the Lord restores an Altar the Devil builds one nearby”

In the O.T. the restoration of an altar often signified that the Lord was about to do a great thing in Israel. The restoration of the altar called the people back to a true worship of the one God, which was, more than uplifting worship meetings; this involved a practical repentance, a breaking of idols and radical social change.

We believe the Lord is restoring an altar of true worship, and calling to us: To examine our lives, and to let go of the idols that have taken His place. To actively resist social evil. To find a ‘different way’ of being a Christian in a society that has rejected the God of Jesus, and yet one in which we remain almost completely identified.

Yet the Devil, too, has built an altar. The new age movement, with its alternative everythings, is calling to people to find ‘an alternative spirituality’ to that which we have experienced in the western world. But involved in this call is also the call to worship a different God than ‘He who has been revealed to us in the Lord Jesus’. And while the altar may look familiar, and the ‘liturgy’ sound the same, the worship will only lead to a greater manifestation of evil disguised as ‘good’. We shall not worship at that altar.

I am sad to say that one of the leading proponents of this evil influence is a monastic, and many of the older monastic movements are accepting this deception as a way to renewal. We ourselves must beware; but we must still take the journey.

While we are unsure of what the new, monasticism may look like in its outward form, we already are beginning to experience the nature of the inward call, and we can speak, however hesitantly, about that. That is what we shall now attempt to do.

Several years ago, I had a dream which I believed the Lord would have me share with a prominent church leader, who had the responsibility for many growing churches.

In that dream, I saw a man who was the leader of a great city which he had helped to build. The city was very prosperous, well organised, with lots of interesting activities which everybody participated in. Outwardly, the city seemed fine, and so did the leader. However, at night the leader would leave the city and go into the desert. Inwardly, he felt empty and afraid, sensing that there was something wrong deep inside him and his city. He would sit in the desert at night and weep, then return to the city next, morning, and continue his work, as if all was well.

The city was admired by all around, and this made matters worse; for he was afraid to tell anyone of his concern, and his own inner loneliness.

He continued to go into the desert for several nights; until one night he reached such a point of despair that he cried out to God to help him. At first he thought God would not answer him; and he sat down on a large stone, feeling dejected.

As he sat, wondering what to do next, he began to feel new life rising inside of him. He realised that the stone on which he sat was one which he and his people had carried through the desert to help build the city. The stone evoked memories of the faith, the commitment, the first love relationship he and his people shared with God, then.

This is what he had lost, that inward desire for God that gave meaning to everything else: this is what he wanted.

He then began going into the desert, by day as well as by night, others followed him, and renewed their covenant of love with the Father. They didn’t forget their responsibilities in the city, for their families and their work; but priorities began to change. Instead of seeking God for his blessings, they began to seek him for himself. Some moved out of the city, into the ‘poor’ towns, taking with them their new found love for the Father to those who were hurting and vulnerable. Common to all was the desire to be single minded in their love of God.

1. The Divine Concern

All true spiritual renewal begins with an urgent desire for God. It comes with the realisation that our Christian experience, no matter how ‘good’, no matter how ‘blessed’, is lacking: we are not truly getting to know God.

The call to the ‘desert’ begins with a ‘divine Concern’, an urgent desire to get to know the Lord more deeply: this is the one thing necessary. Such a desire need not occur during a time of spiritual crisis; but, rather, when it would seem our lives are on course, and being blessed by the Lord.

Thomas Merton talks about two types of darkness that come into the life of a believer:

The first is caused by our sin, our rejection of God and his plan and purpose for our lives. This often issues in moral failure, both personal and corporate, and a breakdown in our relationships. To come out of this darkness we need to repent, and return to the Lord, to receive his forgiveness and healing, to make restitution, and be reconciled with those we have wounded an our way.

The second type of night is when God seems absent, and yet we can find no reason, though we search diligently for one. Activities, both sacred and secular, which once gave us meaning and fulfillment, now seem dry and arid, Our hearts become restless, as it they cannot be satisfied. It is in this darkness that God is calling to our hearts to seek a deeper relationship with him.

When this happens we must STOP!

FOR WE ARE EITHER BEING CALLED TO A DESERT VACATION OR A
DESERT VOCATION.

2. A Strategic Retreat

To retreat is to remove ourselves as far as possible from the normal, and everyday, responsibilities that we share. The purpose is to give more time to seeking the Lord in prayer, meditation and study. This is a time to reflect on God, and a time of self examination. This is practical repentance; for our deliberate decision to re order our priorities to be with the Lord reflects our seriousness.

In most cases, such a retreat is temporary. The purpose: to renew our commitment to the Lord, so we can give ourselves more compassionately to the vocation he has called us to.

Or, it may be that the ‘call to the desert’ was initiated by the Lord to give us a new sense of direction for our lives, and to prepare us to go a new way.

In many cases, the Lord just wants to draw close to us, to reveal his Fatherhood in a deeper way, to increase our sense of security in Him.

These temporary retreats are desert vacations.

For some, the retreat into the desert is for a longer period. Temporary retreats bring no respite from the sense of abandonment by the Lord, no ease from the urgent desire to be closer to the Lord. Nothing else will do: the Spirit and the Bride say, “COME AWAY, MY LOVE”.

This is the beginning of the call which is the desert vocation.

3. Self Denial

To make any type of retreat we need to re order our priorities; we know we are going to be ‘away for a while’, and need to make sure all our responsibilities are covered. At times this can stretch us, and we soon start making excuses as to why we shouldn’t bother taking time out. Remember the story from the Desert Fathers: “Stay in your cell”? Well, some of us don’t even get there! and, for the same reasons, we want to leave when we do get there!

A desert vacation will involve self denial

If we are sensing a deeper call to the desert, then we need advice and assistance, for it will involve some major changes of priorities in our lives. This was the role of the Abba in the desert, to give advice and direction from personal experience. Such changes need to be approached slowly and with great humility; our vocation needs to be tested before we make life changing decisions. But self denial, often of a radical nature, will be involved.

We have been blessed to see couples called together to the desert, and also partners supporting each other when only one senses the call.

We need great wisdom to discern our vocation in God; and the Lord gives us time and support to find our new way.

But a necessary word of warning here:

Anybody who feels called to a desert vocation must be willing to give up all ‘opportunities for success’, whether they be sacred or secular. The desert vacation is not an opportunity to jump onto the latest spiritual bandwagon!

Again quoting Merton:

‘The monk is not defined by his task, his usefulness; in a certain sense he is supposed to be useless, because his mission is not to do this or that job, but to be a man of God.”

4. Resistance of Evil

One doesn’t have to be in the desert very long to be aware of the reality of evil. Without the usual distraction and activities, one becomes aware of another level of reality present in the world, and in our own consciousness. That is why the desert is never a ‘sickly’ attempt to escape from life and its complications, or indeed from ourselves. It is in the desert that these paradoxes of our lives in the world come sharply into focus. It is this self awareness and the awareness of spiritual darkness that drive us to prayer; that drive us to the study of the scriptures; that drive us to seek support and counsel.

ROWAN WILLIAMS:

“The cry to Gad as ‘Father’ in the New Testament is not a calm acknowledgement of a universal truth about God’s abstract Fatherhood; It is the child’s cry out of a nightmare … a cry of outrage, fear, shrinking away when faced with the horror of the world… yet not simply or exclusively protest, but trust as well… ABBA! FATHER! ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE TO THEE.”

Our prayer becomes one of protest. This is the beginning of intercession, of the desire to see the Kingdom of God come in all its power into our lives, and into our world. But if our prayer was just protest, then we would soon turn in despair from the Lord, overwhelmed by the reality of sin and evil.

But our prayer is also trust. This is the beginning of contemplation. In the night, the Lord is present in all his beauty and splendour, and we discover he has indeed overcome all the realities of sin and evil. This is our joy; this is the ‘quies’, the ‘rest’, of the desert.

That is why the Fathers warn people not to come to the desert if they are attempting to escape from themselves.

This warning we must take seriously.

We are not escaping from the world, condemning the church of which we are members, nor seeking to escape from ourselves.

The desert vocation is not an attempt to set up a new church; indeed, it must be sustained within the community of all true believers. No-one comes to the desert to leave the church!

The desert vocation is not an attempt to start a new movement, to issue a new plan or programme. It is, in effect, an attempt to be delivered from all such ideas.

Let me close with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

‘The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism, which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the sermon on the mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.’
John T. Skinner

But to return to our question, what motivated these Christians to emigrate to the desert?
From the very earliest times, the desert was a place of retreat, a safe haven for those led to escape persecution and social rejection.
But the mass exodus to the desert- did not begin during the great persecutions. At this time the majority of Christian preferred to ‘stay put’ even if being a witness to the Lord, meant death, which it inevitably did. There were those who welcomed martyrdom, for they saw it as the way home’.
Early in the 3C, after the Emperor Constantine had embraced Christianity, elevating it to the state religion, Christians began to find themselves in favour, rather than persecuted. It was at this point, when Christians began to find themselves at home in the world, that the response to the ‘call of the desert’ began to gain momentum, as we have said, beginning at first with a few, and then a multitude.
As Thomas Merton has pointed out:
“It should seem to us much stranger than it does, this paradoxical flight from the world that attained its greatest dimensions (I almost said frenzy) happened when the ‘world’ officially became Christian.”
Here was an opportunity to be openly Christian. Now an attempt could be made to ‘Christianise’ the whole of society, to put the Christian faith into practice in a collective way, and bring the whole of life under the Lordship of Christ, without the constant threat of persecution. It is not surprising that, many Christians, weary at the long years of persecution and social isolation, and filled with the excitement of attempting to ‘Christianise’ society, seized the opportunity with both hands.
Was, then, the Christian withdrawal into the desert purely a negative move? Was it an attempt to retreat from all the complications and compromise in attempting to Christianise society? Was it a judgmental act, motivated to shame those Christians who had decided to stay and work out their salvation in the city? Which Christians made the right response to this new and favourable situation, those who stayed in the ‘city’ or those who withdrew to the desert? In the mystery of God the answer has to be, BOTH.
One of my favourite stories, which I think will illustrate this point, comes from Elizabeth Gouges’ book on the life of St Francis of Assisi. There is a moment when St Francis meets with Cardinal John, and the two embrace. You can imagine the scene, Francis in his robes of poverty and the cardinal dressed elegantly. Yet as they embrace they realise they share the same heart and devotion for the Lord. Yet, one is called to the temptations of poverty, and the other to the temptations of riches or, to put it another way, one is called to the temptations of the desert, and the other to the temptations of the city.
However, in making this point, I don’t want to blunt the contribution made by the Desert Fathers in what I believe was a radical and prophetic movement essential to the survival of the church. For, after all, it was the ‘little man’ from Assisi who was the primary motivating factor in bringing renewal to the church, not Cardinal John!
In his book, ‘Ways of Imperfection’, Simon Tugwell points out:
“lf we are to understand the characteristic emphases of the Desert Fathers, it is important to put them back into their context and see that they are not founding something entirely new; to a considerable extent they are reacting to a situation which had taken shape before them, with roots in very primitive developments in the church … “
From the earliest beginnings of the church the theme of being ‘homeless in the world’ was one that was written deeply into the Christian consciousness. The Lord Himself had left his family and the security of his home and work to pursue the vocation his Father had set before Him. He had given up the right to a ‘normal life’ for the sake of the kingdom, and called upon His disciples to follow His example if their vocation in the kingdom demanded it. Whatever vocation the Father would call His children to, all were promised times of persecution and social isolation, because of their commitment to the kingdom, with it the promise of fruits of the kingdom, with love, joy and peace coming close to the top of the list. It is no surprise, then, that the earliest Christians described themselves as resident aliens in the world: ‘parakoi’ in Greek, and ‘peregrine’ in Latin. They identify themselves with the great heroes of faith in the O.T. who acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth’(Heb 11:13). They were ‘those who desire a better country’. A C2 Christian apologist describes the presence of Christians in the world in this way;
‘Though they are residents at home in their own countries, their behaviour there is more like aliens’, they take full part as citizens, but they also submit to everything as if they were foreigners. For them, any foreign country is a motherland, and any motherland is a foreign country.’
The earliest Christians would have understood perfectly the term ‘Internal Émigrés’ for that is indeed is what they were. (Did we understand it?)
The high ethical standards of the early church, were an unconscious criticism of the society in which they lived, motivated not by a question for ‘the good’ but as a result of their personal devotion to Jesus.
They lived in the ‘world’ in an attitude of repentance, not regarding themselves as superior to their neighbours, but, rather, acknowledging with their lives their personal dependence on the Lord. Their personal behaviour which would have been regarded as ascetic in comparison to their ‘neighbours’ left them open to the charge or being a ‘little strange’, yet those who got to know the early Christians found them to be warm and loving, contented and humorous despite their vulnerable situation. They were seeking to live out, in a very real and ordinary way the Lord’s command to ‘be in the world, but not of the world’. It is this emphasis that the Desert Fathers sought to understand and to maintain in the very social context they were called to live in.
Those who had regarded themselves as strangers and aliens in a foreign land, and had been treated as such, now found themselves welcome and ‘at home’ in the world. For many this sudden change of status was too much. They had been schooled in the ethics of ‘exile’ which were rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, and they were reluctant to begin to renegotiate the terms of their presence in society in the new situation.
They were being thrust into a situation which they felt that neither the church nor the state were prepared for, and perhaps they could hear the echo that would dominate the Christian world ‘what has the emperor to do with the church?’ or, more recently ‘what has the church to do with the state?’ and the continual conflict and compromise that would result.

For the Desert Fathers the price of ‘freedom’ was too much to pay. They saw the dangers of the identification of the church and the state; and the fact that the symbol of the cross was now becoming identified with the ‘temporal power’ of the Empire only strengthened this conviction.
The former soldiers of Christ found themselves conscripted into the army of the Christian empire, an action that was not easily rationalised away for those who were only 350 years away from the Sermon on the Mount, and whose brethren had once been the victims of this army.

They were afraid that they would lose their Christian identity if they made their home in a world in which money, power, fame, success, influence and good connections were the ways to self-esteem, in a world which says, ‘You are what you have.’ They could see that to embrace this false identity would mean the loss of the security and safety that they had experienced in their devotion to another kingdom, for a false security, where the permanent desire ‘for more’: more power, more money, more Influence, more friends, more success, would lead in some mysterious way to a place of complete safety.

And so it is my opinion that the primary motivating factor that caused countless Christians to respond to the call of the desert was not the negative: ‘I DON’T WANT TO LIVE HERE,’ but rather; ‘I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LIVE HERE.’ This was a cry of the heart; and the retreat to the desert was an attempt to answer the question: ‘HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?’
To quote Thomas Merton again:
“ the flight of these men (and-women) to the desert was neither purely negative, nor purely individualistic. They were not rebels against society. True, they were in a certain sense ‘Anarchists’ and it will do no harm to think of them in that light. These were men who did not believe in letting themselves be passively guided and ruled by a decadent state, and who believed that there was a way of getting along without slavish dependence on accepted, conventional values. But they did not intend to place themselves above society. They did not reject society with proud contempt, as they were superior to other men. On the contrary, one of the reasons that they fled from the world was that in the world men were divided into those who were successful, and imposed their will on others, and those who had to give in and be imposed upon. The Desert Fathers declined to be ruled by men, but had no desire to rule over others themselves. Nor did they fly from human fellowship. The society they sought was one where all men were truly equal, where the only authority under God was the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience and love.”
‘How then shall we live?’
To a certain extent, we have looked at the way in which the desert fathers lived. We have considered and observed their outward conduct by looking at the way they settled in the desert. What we are concerned to learn now is the inner meaning of monastic life. We shall try to listen to the ‘heart of the desert fathers’.
To do this we will use as our source Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Desert Fathers did not offer theories on the spiritual life, nor did they give lectures or write essays. The words we have from them are responses to their fellows in the desert, and to their occasional visitors. They were not intended to be general truths, but were practical, ordinary and down-to-earth answers to questions put to them by those who were searching for God, those who were in despair, those who needed consolation, and those in need of correction.
One of the things that strikes me most in the Sayings of the Fathers is the humour that runs through many of the stories.
(I must give another example.’ A brother came to visit Abba Sylvanus at Mount Sinai. When he saw the brothers working hard, he said to the old man, “Do not work for food that perishes, for Mary has chosen the good part.” Then the old man called his disciple; “Zachary, give this brother a book and put him in an empty cell.” Now when it was three o’clock the brother kept looking out of the door to see someone would call him for the meal. But nobody called him. He got up, went to see the old man, and asked: “Abba, didn’t the brothers eat today?” The old man said, “Of course we did.” “Then why didn’t you call me?” he said. The old man replied, “You are a spiritual person, and do not need that kind of food, but since we are earthly, we want to eat and that’s why we work. Indeed you have chosen the good part, reading all day long, and not wanting to eat earthly food.” When the brother heard this he repented and said, “Forgive me, Abba.” Then the old man said to him: “Mary certainly needed Martha ,and is really by Martha’s help that Mary is praised”’)
Apart from the humour, what were the themes that were emphasised in the hearts of the Desert Fathers? Let us look at The 3 R’s of the desert;

1. Repentance
Without doubt, the Desert Fathers were men who recognised that they were broken and incomplete. They were men who were serious about sin and recognised their need of God. The movement to the desert was essentially a movement of repentance.
Let’s listen to some of their own comments:
“It was my vices that led me here, not my virtue”
“If you want to have rest in this life say,
“Who am I?” And judge no one.”

‘I am a man and a sinner, and I came out here to weep for my sins and to adore Jesus the Son of the living God”
“Our God is a consuming fire; hence we ought to kindle the divine fire in ourselves with labour and tears”

For the desert fathers repentance was not a one off event. For them, the life of faith was to be lived in a permanent state of repentance, of continually receiving forgiveness from God. Although they had left the world for the desert, they realised that the attitudes of the world lay deep within themselves. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner” was a favourite prayer of the Desert. For salvation from sin, it was to Jesus the Desert Fathers turned.
Repentance was a very practical matter. Many of the sayings of the Desert Fathers to those who enquired about how they could really get to Know God, remind me of the advice Jesus gave to the rich young ruler. In that instance, Jesus got straight to the heart of the matter: “It’s money that is keeping you from a true knowledge of God”. Here, Jesus was giving a specific word to a specific person, revealing what was his problem getting to know God. Jesus’ advice was simple: Get rid of your money! Come, follow Me.
In the Sayings we see the same spirit at work; they give specific answers to specific people regarding the question, How can I really get to know God?
“Learn to control your tongue”
“Learn to control your belly”
“If any one asks you for anything give it to him. Don’t be stingy.”
“Stop thinking evil about your brother”
For the Fathers repentance was not an intellectual, or purely emotional, response to the forgiveness God has given us in Jesus.
Repentance meant continual change, a continual choosing to let God have anything that was a hindrance in getting to know Him better. It is within the context of repentance the that Desert Fathers emphasised the importance of ‘self-knowledge’, and the importance of ‘paying attention to oneself ‘. Their concern, for themselves and for others, was not that they should behave correctly according to the rules, but rather, that they should be able to ‘discern’ the truth about their inward condition.
I am reminded of a verse from Psalm 51 which makes this point:
“surely You require truth in the inward parts:
You teach me wisdom in the inmost places

What they were looking for was purity of heart, purity of inner desires and motives, and this could not, be reached without facing the base motives, and inordinate desires that we all share in because of the nature of sin.
The context for such self knowledge was the Cell. The Cell is absolutely central to the spirituality of the Desert Fathers.
One of the most famous desert savings involves a brother new to the desert. At first he was very excited, and anxious to make progress in ‘getting to know God’. But not very long after getting into his cell, he found himself rather bored and listless, unable to settle at anything. ‘What on earth am I doing here?’ he thought. So off he went to see his Abba, who politely asked him to stay in his cell, and his cell would teach him everything. So off he went back to the cell. He was soon bored and listless again, and he began to think to himself:
What on earth am I doing here! I could be doing great things for God, rather than just sitting around here. I could have been a great preacher. And he imagined himself in the pulpit surrounded by people anxious to hear what HE would have to say. This is no good! So off he went to see the abbot again. The abbot was very polite.. “Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”
So off he went. But this time he began to think about other things, things he wouldn’t really like to talk about, things he thought he would stop thinking about when he was a fully fledged desert father. He was overwhelmed by these thoughts and ran out the cell, to see the abbot. The Abba was very polite, “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” This time he returned to the cell exhausted. He collapsed onto the floor in a heap, overcome by depression. Picking up some of the reeds on the floor, he began to weave them into a basket. Then he paused and had a meal. By this time he felt a little better, so he said his prayers and read the scriptures. Then he went back to making his baskets. He soon had a rhythm going, and he found himself able to face and to look at himself, to be alone in the presence of God.
‘The cell,’ to quote another Abba,
‘is that furnace of Babylon in which the three children found the Son of God, but it is also the pillar of cloud out of which God spoke to Moses.’
The cell was certainly not a place to hide from the world; it was the place where the world was faced in all its fury.
But if the Desert Fathers were serious about ‘facing themselves’ they were most reluctant in sorting other people out. As we have said, they were reluctant spiritual directors. Such was their attitude about not making judgements about others, that they could have and have been accused of being rather casual about morality.
Several of my favourite stories make this point:
‘One of the brothers had sinned, and -.he priest told him to leave the community. So then Abbot Bessarian got up and walked out with him saying, “I am a sinner, too.”
‘A brother in Scete happened to commit a fault, and the elders assembled, and sent for Abbot Moses to join them,. He, however, did not want to come. The priest sent him a message saying, Come, the community of the brethren is waiting for you. So he arose, and started off. And taking with him a very old basket full of holes, he filled it with sand and carried it behind him. The elders came out to meet him and said, “What is this father?” the elder replied, “My sins are running out behind me, and I don’t even see them, and I have not have come to judge he sins of another”

There was a fornicating monk, who kept a woman in his cell,
so that word began to get around about it.
Some monks living nearby decided to do something about it, and the asked Abba Ammonas who was visiting the region go with them.
The monk seeing them coming hid the woman in a large water Jar. Abba Ammonas saw this is a vision.

When they all went into the cell, the Abba sat on the jar, while the others searched the room. They could find nothing, and went away ashamed. When they had gone, the Abba got up and took the brother by both hands and simply said to him:, “Brother, I think it is time for you to pay attention to yourself.”

If the Desert Fathers were serious about sin, they were also serious about the love of God, which they knew well. This is what they communicated to others; repentance was the way home to a loving father.
‘An Elder was asked by a certain soldier if God would forgive a sinner. And he said to him, “Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is worn, will you throw it away?” The soldier replied and said, “No, I will mend it and put it back on.” The Elder said to him, “If you take care of your own cloak, will God not be merciful to his own image?”’
2. Renunciation
Self denial played an important role in the life of the Fathers, which they regarded as the road to ‘inner transformation’ or becoming more Christ Like. The theological term we use for this is sanctification. The spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation on God’s Word, and manual work were regarded as essential to the spiritual life, but they were just regarded as ‘tools’ to help one break through to a deeper understanding of God, and oneself.
These were the outward signs of an inner willingness to surrender the whole of one’s life to God.
But anybody who has tried to deepen their relationship with God suddenly discovers there is an enemy inside the camp, the self!
The Fathers were very specific about the characteristics of the problems of ‘the self’ which they described them in detail and gave them a name: Logosmoi.
Logosmoi are thoughts that invade a person’s heart and mind and divide it in its single minded quest for God and to follow their vocation. A person’s becomes so preoccupied with these thoughts, and images, that they can no longer concentrate on their vocation. The Logosmoi gradually lead them away from what they are meant to be doing into a world of fantasy.
Logosmoi keep us preoccupied with our own need for security, our own personal welfare, our own needs, to the exclusion of others.
Abba Evagrius lists 8 of these Logosmoi, and in describing the content of these thoughts, provides a penetrating analysis of human nature.
Gluttony
Gluttony is not regarded simply as over eating, or the desire for fancy foods, which were regarded as harmful. The ‘thought’ of gluttony is the constant preoccupation with the way we eat, are we getting enough? Are we eating the right things? Gluttony is the preoccupation with food, and an over anxiety about one’s health.

Lust
For the Fathers, lust was simply a matter of allowing our sexual fantasies to run away with us. Lust “fills our mind with a desire for a variety of people, in a variety of places and in a variety of positions.”
Real relationships that go wrong do less damage than corrupted imaginary ones. Lust is the exact opposite of a real relationship between real people and as a result it creates problems in all our relationships.

Love of Money
The love of money leads to hoarding, putting away as much as you can, giving away as little as you can, in order to save for the future. We imagine ourselves being out of work, and worry about being too sick or old to work. We worry about our future if we will still be able to enjoy the ‘little luxuries of life’ or, even worse, no longer have any security. We see money as our security not faith in God.

Sorrow
Is seen to be preoccupation with the past, the good old days, better times when things were done well, done differently. When we had everything we needed to live a proper life. These thoughts lead us out of the present and leave us in the past. Often the memories we treasure are distorted, altered, and untrue.

Anger
Anger is the preoccupation with the way people have slighted us, overlooked us, spoke badly about us. This is the type of anger that consciously or unconsciously looks to pay back, to take revenge to make sure the other persons receives their just rewards.
For the Fathers, to continue in this state leads to ill health, nightmares and eventual- hallucinations.

Listlessness
This is a condition where we cannot settle to anything: we wander around aimlessly, waiting for time to pass us by, or wondering what will come next. We spend our time daydreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else, anything else. At the heart of this Logosmoi is the temptation for us to abandon our course – and if we do run away, we will take all our problems with us.

Vanity
These thoughts get us to see ourselves in good situations, the complete centre of attention. One of the Fathers describes a recurring daydream about his own importance. Hundreds of people come to seek his spiritual advice. He sees himself as a great preacher, admired by the crowds for his wisdom and insight. He longs to leave the cell for the limelight.

Pride
Is the ultimate failing, it consists of thoughts that we can achieve anything we want without a mature dependence on God. In the desert that goal was
spiritual maturity. Pride leads to spiritual madness. In the desert it led to many strange practices, including putting oneself in chains and eating grass.

There is no way the Fathers were advocating the repression of
natural, healthy God-given appetites.

It is healthy to want to eat; it is natural to have a positive attitude towards sex,
It is great to have enough money to meet our needs, to be angry in the face of injustice, to cherish memories, to affirm our achievements.

The problem begins when these healthy appetites and desires become inordinate, out of control, or they control us, especially when we draw close to God.

But in no way were the Desert Fathers advocating that human effort could save a man from his sinful self. Many of their Sayings positively warn against this:
‘The old men used to say, if you see a brother trying to climb up to heaven by his own will, hold him by the foot and pull him down to the ground, for it’s just not good for him’
The Fathers knew the very real dangers of ‘will worship’ which is just another form or idolatry.
They knew well that if the temptation of the city was compromise, which led to spiritual death then:
THE TEMPTATION OF THE DESERT”-“ WAS PRIDE, WHICH LED TO MADNESS.
And indeed we find that madness in the desert, with people eating grass, binding themselves with chains, beating themselves, going without any sleep a, going without food, separating themselves from all human fellowship until they are finally overcome by the ‘desert madness.’
Church history has emphasised the dangers of ‘will worship’ where attempts were made to purge whole societies from these ‘seven deadly sins.’ Such paranoia is not part of the message of the gospel.
What the Fathers were advocating was the need to be honest with ourselves, to be real about our true condition. This was not to lead us to despair, or self depreciation, but to a ‘Loving Father,’ and a freedom of Spirit only he can give.
The spiritual disciplines were the ‘prodigal’s way home.’ Of themselves they cannot help us. Yet they were the necessary road to the one who can.
3. Resistance
One of the images used to express the spirituality of the desert was that of ‘spiritual warfare.

The monk is a member of Christ’s Army, the Militia Christi. The Desert was not only a place of ‘spiritual revelation’ the place where God speaks, it was also the place of confrontation and conflict, where one did battle with the forces of evil.

The desert was thought to be the home of the demons, who after their work in the city encouraging wickedness, returned to the desert. Such thinking is regarded as being ‘ancient’ and not relevant to our modern minds.
But an examination of the Father’s explanation and experience of the reality of evil should cause us to re-evaluate our own position.

If Logosmoi were thoughts that cause a person to be preoccupied with themselves, and lock them up in a world of self interest., demons were spiritual entities that took advantage of this preoccupation, and who sought to ‘possess’ the situation and take over the person or the community.

To use modern language:
Logosmoi led a man to being ‘dehumanised’ his life becoming a
preoccupation with his own ‘illusion of security’. All who threaten that
security become ‘enemies’. To become ‘dehumanised’ leads to being
‘demonised’ where the enemies of our own security have to be destroyed
at all costs, for the sake of the Good.
Merton captures this thought in his notes; On Peace
He gives the illustration of a child, so tiny it had to be carried into
the gas chamber, confidently chatting with the guard carrying him, about
the ‘birdie’ on his cap.
Merton comments;
‘We should not fear the ‘wicked them’ but rather the dehumanised and
demonised man, who did what he did for good and rational reasons, or
who (for personal security) simply obeyed orders.
One of the Desert Father’s stories continues this point;
Abba Anthony said, the time is coming when people will be insane, and
they see somebody who is not insane they will attack that person
saying; ‘You are insane because you are not like us.’
John T. Skinner
Internal Émigrés 1991