Author: Bishop Tim

Prayer Circle: Nepal, Vanuatu, those facing execution

Many of us find ourselves distressed by the news each day. While a great deal of the information broadcast by news organisations at the moment seems designed purely to trigger unnecessary emotional distress, some communicates to each of us significant human tragedies that rouse our hearts to natural compassion.

In the face of the scale of large tragedies, it is easy to feel helpless, to disconnect. But the Gospel assures us that we have the strength to face even the most hopeless situations, to continue to love, to continue to care.

praying nun

One natural way to show care is to pray. To allow the reality of the situation to move your heart and release that movement in prayer to the Most High.  Christ assures us that our simplest prayers are heard, so there’s no need to make it complicated. Christian communities all over the world meet together in-person or online to form prayer circles – to pray together about the same things.

I want to pick out three things present for me in the news this week to ask you to care about. My suggestion is that you consider two things: to pray and to act. Each of these disasters is in need of your help, if you can give it – donations, time or materials. Each of these inspire prayer.

Join me in an online prayer circle to pray on behalf of these three situations especially over the next 48 hours (29 April to 1 May). But allow your prayer to also move you to act.

In Nepal over the weekend a massive earthquake caused huge devastation affecting tens of thousands of people and killing at least 5000, possibly many more. Nepal has many remote villages which are difficult to access, so finding and helping people is particularly difficult.

Vanuatu was hit six weeks ago by Tropical Cyclone Pam, a category five hurricane now regarded as one of the worst natural disasters in that nation’s history. The cyclone devastated much of the country and recovery will take years.

In Bali, convicted Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are in their final hours of life before facing execution by firing squad. This situation seems especially tragic here in Australia because the media has done a great job of portraying the complexities of their situation. Many Australians feel sympathy for these two convicted drug smugglers and feel they should be spared.

But I feel we should direct the compassion roused in contemplating the situation of these two men even more broadly. Nearly 800 people faced state executions globally in 2013 and Amnesty International estimates 2466 people were sentenced to death worldwide in 2014. In some countries this punishment is faced by LGBT people simply for who they sleep with or who they love.

So let us pray for the people of Nepal, for the people of Vanuatu and for everyone facing state executions, in particular Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. Pray simply, pray from your heart, but pray.

Here are some suggestions for action, but check your favourite or local organisations to see how you can help.

Nepal

Vanuatu

Death Penalty

Women At The Edge: Female voices in innovative Christian theology

I gave a talk in 2014 at the AJC Conclave in Chicago about five women theologians who have particularly influenced me. Here’s the original description:

In the last twenty years, some of the most interesting, challenging and spiritually enlivening work in Christian theology has come from women. Initially, in challenging patriarchal traditions in theology, feminist theology has opened greater space for the participation of all people in the discourse of the tradition. Recently, women, particularly women contemplatives, have opened further space at what has classically been the edge of acceptability with thinking and approaches characterised by a fiery courage and a willingness to challenge orthodox thinking.

This talk will give a brief overview of five contemporary women theologians who have touched my own journey: Cynthia Bourgeault, Bernadette Roberts, Maggie Ross, Mary Coloe and Margaret Barker. Each of these women simultaneously reaches deeply into the history of Christian tradition as well as generating a sense of the freedom and possibility of genuine newness. I hope to share some sense both of the richness of their thinking as well as the effect they have had on me and my view of the tradition.

 

Advent – Fruition

I felt very blessed to share the Eucharist and a potluck with some friends on the final Sunday in Advent. Since St Uriel’s started, we’ve usually celebrated a Christmas liturgy a few days before Christmas so that regulars can share the Eucharist with each other before returning to their families for Christmas day. It means we have the sense of starting Christmas a few days early and it’s pretty relaxed, but I also love it because it’s the one time of year where everyone knows the tunes for the hymns, so we can sing.

In this last year, I’ve revived a practice from the early days of our community, before I was ordained, which I call a “Circle Homily”. It’s a simple idea – rather than having me deliver a sermon as a lecture, I start by giving a few thoughts and offering some questions about the readings; then each person has a minute or two to offer their observations or interpretations or ideas; I try to draw out some themes and wrap up things up at the end. We’re a small community, so this doesn’t tend to drag on and people get the idea that it’s good to be concise. I’ve found it a wonderful practice – the diversity and depth of perspectives always brings the themes of the week to life and offers me a different way to see things. I hope it lets us all see each other more richly as well.
This week the readings were all about the Nativity and the circle was particularly rich. What leapt out for me from the conversation was the image of God’s vulnerability – the Logos incarnate as a tiny child, needing care and love and protection – not the image of Christ the World-Maker or Christ the King, but the fragility of the Divine. The second aspect of the nativity story that draws attention is the incarnational focus – God becoming a flesh and blood human being – not by stepping into a meatsuit like a spaceman, or by taking on the image of humanity but staying unincarnate, but by actually being born to a human woman in extremely humble circumstances. The third thread for me was the sense in which the birth of the Divine in our own selves, the indwelling of God, has this fragile, vulnerable character.
In my last letter, I noted that adventus refers to the physical arrival of an important person and in the outer, literal sense offered by the nativity tale in Luke’s gospel we see the physical arrival of the Logos as a human being in Bet Leḥem. The three threads from our conversation on Sunday night point to another, inner, more personal meaning of the story. Perhaps the story reminds us that the Divine is eternally born within each of us – given birth by our own pure, virginal spirit, in the humble surrounds of our own life. At first, the flickering spark of God might seem fragile, tentative, tiny and yet with love and care the gospel story offers us the possibility that it grows to be a world-changing fire, transforming everything.
For many of us, contact with the Divine is an inward experience of vision or light, but the suggestion of the tradition – implied by the word “advent” is that the Logos also arrives in us physically, transforming not just mind and heart but body as well. This is certainly the vision of many of the Fathers and Mothers in the eastern traditions, like St Symeon – whose (perhaps over-quoted) poem I’ll include at the end.
May this Christmas time grant you the grace to witness your own inmost nature and, even without the benefit of angels tipping you off, recognise that tiny spark for Who it is wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in the manger of what might seem like a very ordinary life. May you raise your sights and see all around you other virgin spirits nursing the very same Child. May you guard it with your life until the world is afire.
Merry Christmas!
+Tim

We awaken in Christ’s body as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ.
He enters my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him?.
I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous?
Then open your heart to him,
and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ’s body
where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us
dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged,
is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely.
And radiant in His light, we awaken as the Beloved in every last part of our body.

– St Symeon the New

Advent – Intentions

© Derek Soberal

We’ve now passed into the season of Advent, the preparation season before Christmas. The name comes from adventus in Latin which means the arrival – the physical arrival – of an honoured guest. In the mainstream traditions, it refers both to the commemoration of the birth of Christ and to the anticipated “second coming” of Christ. For gnostic Christians, the future coming of Christ may be more a hope that Christ will arrive within the heart of the practitioner.

Our tradition refers to Advent, like Lent, as a “solemn” season, in other words a quiet season of preparation. For us, in our part of the world, this seems such a paradox. There are so many competing demands as we head into the month before Christmas and summer begins to heat up: parties, invitations to the beach, camping trips, work end-of-year functions. “Quiet”, contemplation, prayer – these things seems a long way away. I have found, in my own life, that respecting the energy of the tradition is important – the more space in my day and my life and myself I make during the solemn seasons the more I can tune into the deep quiet that is always present, thrumming away in the background.

It’s common to call this the “silly season” and I’ve started to wonder whether the reason it always feels so crazy, so out-of-control, is that we’re so caught up in it’s busy-ness and so detached from the sacred that we all go a little nuts.

I’m not proposing that you become a recluse during Advent or that you don’t go camping, but I am suggesting that you develop some firm intentions right now, so that you work this season on your own terms instead of letting it sweep you away. I believe that Advent challenges us to pause, reaffirm our intentions and our practice and step mindfully through the summer, to reinforce our inner work and our prayer life so that we aren’t lost in the rush. How can you establish a daily practice of stepping out of the stream so you can step mindfully back in?

Perhaps you might add some spiritual reading to your morning routine, reassert your meditation practice, add some prayer of gratitude at bedtime, commit yourself to attending a service each week through Advent or simply ensure that each day has some quiet, perhaps a walk in the park, to allow you some space and solitude.

Take a moment today, commit to some practice during the Advent season and get a clear intention to be present to the Peace whenever you can. While you’re there, and perhaps throughout the coming weeks, consider – Who or what comes in the Incarnation? What do you think of Christmas? Who or what are you welcoming?

My blessings on you and your family in this Advent Tide. May Peace find you.

+Tim