I've just returned from a
fantastic retreat time on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. This time it was very
cold and very foggy, the sea fret meant you couldn’t see very much at all for three
days of my stay. But on the last day, the sky turned from grey to blue and I
sat watching this piece of sea, without a soul in sight, just me
and God and the wonder of the wind and the waves, the only sounds around me
being them. A sense of real peace.
As part of my spiritual top
up on the Island, I enter the rhythm of prayer and space offered by the Parish
Church of St Mary, morning and evening prayer at 7.30am and at 5.30pm. The
church was very cold, and I was glad to have taken my winter coat! The readings
each day were quite miserable, the lamentations of Jeremiah in and around
chapter 18. Read them sometime, he is very low indeed and he is cross with
those he is sent to serve and at one point he turns on God and tells him to
sort them out! The pain of the prophet felt very real being read slowly in the
cold. But later in the week, we listened to Jeremiah voicing hope – the hope of
a new relationship with God, a new covenant. And on Sunday morning at 8am
communion, beautifully read from the Book of Common Prayer as I confessed my
manifold sins etc, we heard Psalm 63 – “my soul clings to you, your right hand
upholds me.” It seemed again to me despite everything life (and sometimes the
church) throws at you, God’s word says
there is a better future, there is hope and there is immense possibility.
I believe our church task is to offer hope.
The American theologian and social commentator Jim Wallis once said that
“you can feel optimism, but you have to choose hope.” I see what he means. Hope
is a lifestyle that expects it even if your life and your church aren’t easy
today. You keep practising the story, reciting the truths, and one day you will
see them coming to you leading you to new places. Perhaps our trouble is we
don’t expect hope anymore so we dare not trust, and we content ourselves with
grey skies rather than wait for blue ones.
How can the church offer hope? Where things have gone wrong, what do
we need to do to rediscover God’s hope for us and those around us? What
hopeful signs do we see right now? And how do
we hang on to hope when life hits us again? Well, I think when life is hard,
you need to work harder at keeping close to God, simply that. We come to
worship, we take some spiritual space in order to live where we are and find
God’s hope there too. So, let me end these ramblings with a prayer. Each night,
the community at Marygate House, offers prayers in a beautiful crypt for those
of us on retreat. This year, six of us formed very deep community. There was me
and five ladies – an Anglican priest in training; a spiritual director from
Manchester; a lovely lady who plays the organ in her church in rural Cumbria,
and a very chatty mother and a not so chatty daughter who sometimes got a word
in edgeways when Mum was quiet! We only met on Wednesday, by Sunday it felt we
had known each other for decades. On the night before we left, this prayer was
offered. Perhaps we might use it, as we work out in daily struggle how to offer
hope and how to know hope for ourselves.
Lord of our lives, we thank you for bringing us
to this place where we could rest for a while and find what we needed to find;
where we could wander freely and feel your breath on the wind. Thank you that
we could come before you with all our hurts and wounds and you cradled us in
the stillness. We know that you are no more present here than anywhere else;
but when the noise is too great to feel you, hold us steady in that truth and
help us always to carry the treasure that we have found.”
No comments:
Post a Comment