contemplations for - birminghammethodist.org.uk · web viewit is said, ‘when the candle is lit...

St Mary’s & St Anne’sUnited Benefice, Moseley Birmingham

Contemplations for Holy Week, 2020

All for Transformation

Contemplations for Holy Week 2020

IntroductionDonald Eadie is a former Chair of the Birmingham Methodist District, and in retirement is a writer, a supporter of many and a valued colleague. Donald prepared these reflections for a quiet day in the Anglican Benefice of Mosely. He worked on three talks to introduce times of silence and reflection. With the changed circumstances of Covid19 and the strange way of life we are coming to terms with he has generously agreed to make his work more widely available, and has adapted what he has prepared for use in our homes. Duncan suggests that we move with these materials during Holy Week. At a time when we cannot be physically together we can feel close by using the same stimulus for our reflection and prayer. The recommendation is that we use Section 1 on Monday 6 April, Section 2 on Wednesday 8 April and Section 3 on Good Friday 10 April.

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The Foothills of TransformationWhat I offer was prepared before the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic and the state of emergency declared. If you discover resonances between our theme of transformation and what is now happening within the wider human family and close by, I encourage you to make them but not to dwell too long.If you wish to share your explorations with a friend I encourage you to do so. If you wish, you can contact me through the Benefice Office: ([email protected]). You can also add your thoughts to the Benefice Comment and Debate Forum. What you write will be regarded as confidential.What I offer is not intended as a script to be skimmed through but rather an aid to wondering, pondering, gazing, listening, seeing into the heart of things, kneeling and following.How to enter and inhabit this exploration in contemplation? I am not sure, but would urge that you find your own way, have the courage to be yourself, take time over each section, perhaps half an hour a day, and stay with the section for more than one day. Please let me know what works for you so we can, in turn, help others.I am aware that I could have carried on and on working on what I am offering you, but the time has come to hand it over and trust that, with all its limitations, the Spirit will blow through it and breath it into life in this uncertain and anxious time, in your story and mine.Bon voyage!Donald Eadie, April 2020

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http://www.moseleybenefice.org.uk/index.php/listening-reflecting/kunena-forum

mailto:[email protected]


Preface In recent years I have been increasingly drawn toward the mystery that we call ‘transformation’ and in so many contexts, within creation, within political processes, within human communities and within our own life stories. Woven within everything and everyone there is a calling to consent to transformation, to let go and to yield, to trust into the unimaginable beyond. This mystery is at the heart of the Christian testimony and I will repeat this sentence like a mantra:

‘In Jesus we find the agonising process of transformation to be the very nature of God’s engagement within humanity … ’ (The Exuberant Church – Listening to the Prophetic People of God, Barbara Glasson)

Our Easter prayer is ‘May the whole earth be transformed by mercy and rejoice in hope.’ In the Eucharist we offer ‘lives and gifts for God’s kingdom, all for transformation through your grace and love … ’ Rowan Williams writes, ‘Being vulnerable is the heart of transformation.’The invitation is to share in an exploration. There will be three short reflections with additional resource material for continued contemplation. By way of preparation Find what for you is a quiet, comfortable place in your home and, if possible, a view out of a window. Throughout this time of contemplation identify one or more symbols of your encounter with the mystery we call transformation.

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Placing your symbol(s), a candle and the Bible, on a small table may help to provide continuity of focus. The lighting of the candle. It is said, ‘when the candle is lit angels gather’, and also, ‘angels come in many forms’. We begin with a short, very old mantra which through changing circumstances I have developed. It has become my companion both in the day and night, in hospital wards and clinics. I take a deep breath in and out with each line of the mantra. Use any section or all as helps you most.Thou O Lord art in our midst, Short period of quiet

Thou O Lord, art in our midst,Life giver, Truth revealer, Pain bearer,Transforming presence,Compassionate One.

I remind you this is an exploration into the foothills of transformation, only the foothills. The mysteries we enter are to be explored, not explained. This is a work begun and not completed. By way of introduction to the theme:I belong to those who, as a teenager, wanted to transform the world by the time I was 35.In 1960 the European Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Lausanne gathered with 1,800 young people from 36 countries in attendance. The world of economics, politics, race, social justice, peace building, worship and liturgy, theology, all mingled in ways I had never known before, nor since.

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I continue to be inspired by the dream enunciated by Martin Luther King in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo.As a young person I belonged to those who were horrified by stories from the Holocaust, of Hiroshima, of the brutality between white colonial farmers and the Mau Mau in Kenya. I was forced to face the depraved, destructive depths into which we can plunge within our humanity. Woven within all this I was drawn to the man Jesus of Nazareth, the one who ‘padded around Galilee in sandals’, by his manifesto, his shocking inclusiveness, his way of forgiving during his suffering and dying on the cross. And I gave my ‘yes’, signed up for the revolution, joined others who attempted to live the social transformation within the spirit of the revolutionary way of Jesus. My icons in non-violent action were Ghandi, Kagawa of Japan, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. And now in my ageing and increasing limitation I am aware of my naivety, my disappointments, my despair and the need to let go illusions. Along with others I am almost overwhelmed by the immensity of human suffering alongside the complexity of scientific and technological advancement. And paradoxically within all these things, there is a deepening sense of wonder, an increasing sense of the mystery of things within the ordinariness of things. Slowly we are drawn into the foothills of the mystery of transformation within all creation, all humanity.

‘In Jesus we find the agonising process of transformation to be the very nature of God’s engagement within humanity … ’

This I have discovered to be the core, the heart of the Christian testimony.

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We are drawn toward and perhaps even into what I tentatively call ‘a wordly mysticism’! The journey we embark on cannot be divided neatly into three phases, it is essentially intermingled and takes a lifetime and beyond to unravel and unfold.The invitation is to receive the gift of space and quiet. We are being offered the gift of time, time to go to those places in our lives where we most need to be and there to reflect on our own human experience before God. Our search is for resonances within the mystery of transformation, resonances within creation, within our own humanity. The invitation is to follow, follow what emerges, follow and trust wherever the Holy Spirit may lead us. We are being offered:

time to be open, to come out of hiding, to be real rather than religious, ‘to be’ within the core of our humanity,

open to the mystery we choose to call God, the nudges and the whispers of God’s Spirit within everything,

open to the One who is infinitely beyond yet intimately present in our lives,

open to the mysterious presence within ‘the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us’ (RS Thomas),

open to the One who secretly, subterraneously re-shapes, re-aligns,

open to the One who germinates underground, fertilising within tomb, grave and the descent into hell,

open to the rhythms of the heartbeat, the pulse within all creation, all humanity,

open to the God who offers God’s very self within everything,

open to the God of life within life, ‘ … in all life Thou livest, the true life of all … ‘.

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Some of us have too much silence in our being home alone. Some inhabit the scary silence of the ‘two am vigil’ when all is dark and fears terrorise us. Some are brought to silence within the violent turbulence, the destitution lived in the world. Some of us are brought to silence through the traumas we are experiencing in our daily lives. We seek a way of being before God with whatever truth we know, with whatever experience of reality we are learning to accept.Some of us need the presence of others to help us to remain in the silence.Richard Holloway speaks of ‘sitting silently in front of the resonant absence and feeling beckoned beyond it’. Thomas Merton in one of his journals writes, ‘The body itself can be a hermitage when I have embraced it as quite simply the place where I know I shall meet God, the here and now of my actual humanity.’ There will be three sessions and in addition resource material to aid contemplation, biblical stories, poems, fragments of wisdom. The sessions are brief with everyday stories for reflection.

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The artist is Kjell and he is one of my wife’s cousins. He lives in their home village in the forest area of central Sweden. For over 25 years he has lived with Parkinson’s disease. His wife, Ingela, was encouraged by the doctor to buy paints, paper and an easel, to leave them in the barn where Kjell spent so much time. One winter day when Ingela was at work, their daughters at school, Kjell began to paint with his hands, forming wild patterns, letting the colours run and mix. The cover painting he calls, ‘The Journey’, the second, ‘The Buried Seed’ and the third, ‘Kneeling’.

Kjell

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The Buried Seed

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1. Drawn to Wonder Begin with lighting your candle and seeking your quietness. Focus on, perhaps hold, your symbol of transformation and wonder and ponder for a few minutes. Then place the symbol by the candle.

If you wish, return to your own form of this mantra. Thou O Lord art in our midst, Short period of quiet

Thou O Lord, art in our midst,Life giver, Truth revealer, Pain bearer, Transforming presence, Compassionate One.

QuietnessDonald Nicholls, a devout Roman Catholic and formerly a distinguished Historian at Keele University, said to a friend a few months before his death: ‘I’ve given up thinking and taken up gazing.’Gerry Hughes was that friend. Drawn to Wonder is the title of his book published weeks before his death. In it he writes of the importance of ‘gawking’. And that is the intent within this session, within our essential interdependence with all creation, all humanity, we are drawn to wonder, to gawking. I offer a few stories, images, bits of borrowed wisdomMetamorphosisTwo friends came for coffee one morning, both of them retired head teachers, neither of them finding the Church to be a meaningful place, ‘too few resonances’. They spoke of

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‘morphing’, of a classroom of unruly children being ‘morphed’, of a staff room of exhausted fractious teachers being ‘morphed’. They spoke of a transformative process, a dynamic within the chemistry of a classroom, a staff room and we talked about what this might mean. A South African nun shared with me a dream in which she discovered a diamond. In our time together she wanted to reflect on the geological ‘metamorphic process’ that takes place deep within the earth under great pressure and heat and which produces diamonds.‘Metamorphic processes’ and ‘morphing’ do not belong within my everyday vocabulary. I wrote to a friend who knows about these things. John has been a close friend through ‘the heights and the depths’. He continually draws me into the wonder of the galaxies beyond galaxies, the migration patterns of birds, their long journeys, sometimes asleep on the wing. John also wonders about rocks and where they have come from. I asked him about the metamorphic process and he replied, ‘A short geology course is needed. You will know (I imagine) that some of the rocks we see have spent part of their lives at depths of several miles. Diamonds and kimberlite, the rock in which they usually occur, are formed in the plumbing of ancient volcanoes as a result of the pressures and temperatures they have been subjected to and at great depth. The process is called metamorphosis. There are many forms of metamorphic rock. Slate is metamorphosed shale, marble is metamorphosed limestone. The East Coast of Sweden is composed of metaphoric rock, as is much of Scotland. The common feature of all this is the pressure and temperature caused by deep burial.’ The ChrysalisFrom two letters, and the first from Barbara, a friend who in earlier years studied horticulture.

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‘Did you know that when a caterpillar goes into a chrysalis to become a butterfly it disintegrates completely into liquid- there is nothing of the original body that remains intact? Each molecule of the soup must remember what it has been and also what it is to become … ’ And from a letter written by Jean aged 93, a woman given to much gazing and wondering. ‘The Butterfly is my symbol of transformation. The caterpillar is totally different from the adult flying butterfly. In between, contained in the hard case of the chrysalis, pupa, the tissues of the body are completely broken down and re-formed. As you know, and as I have noted before to you, the Greek for butterfly is psyche (with all that means), which also translates as soul. ‘The Frog is another symbol, though its life is gradual, the tadpole grows, loses its tail, hops from the water to the land as a tiny frog and grows into maturity and this is known as incomplete metamorphosis (the butterfly is complete).’ A story is told of two caterpillars on a warm summer’s day looking up and on seeing a dragonfly dipping over a pond, one said to the other, ‘You wouldn’t get me up in a thing like that!’ Someone once told me that for years she had been shrivelled up, as one who had died, like a dead chrysalis, but now she is crawling out like a butterfly learning to fly as for the first time. For a while re-enter the quietness. What has touched you in these images of the metamorphic process and the chrysalis? Have you become aware of more symbols of transformation?Additional material to aid contemplation

Blessed are You, Holy one of blessings, whose presence fills all creation. (An old Jewish prayer)

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Leaves‘The dying leaves of a hundred million autumns have built up the humus from which our crops spring. A hard, polished acorn falls to the ground and breaks open, but it sends one shoot down and another up, and later there is a tree.’(Maria Boulding)

Reclaiming the DarknessSo to claim back the night is to claim darkness as a time for growth and transformation. It is to free darkness of its overtones of evil and sin and see it as potential richness, fertility, hidden growth and contemplation, as nature broods and contemplates in winter, seemingly inactive, yet preparing for the birthing of spring. It is in darkness that new vision is born. But just as the ‘work of winter’ is indispensable, so the period of darkness has its own tools and activity. (Although there is no comfort and even no real hope experienced for the future, and memories of the past bring no security, the process demands that we move forward, with anger, rage and grief our tools, the solidarity of support groups our resource, trust in the absent God our guide – to an alternative we have no name for, only yearning). (Redeeming the dream, Mary Grey)Poems

Earth’s crammed with heaven,And every common bush afire with God;But only he who sees takes his shoes off,The rest sit around and pluck blackberries … (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)No planet knows that thisOur wayside planet, carrying land and wave,Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave … (One verse in the poem Christ in the Universe by Alice Maynall, 1885-1922)

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Bible passagesIn the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)‘The Spirit hovers over the turbulent waters of our lives and in the depths of our being. Let us be open to these vibrations deep within us bringing us to life.’ (anon)‘Spirit of God hover over the chaos, as you did the first chaos and bring out of it life and hope.’(Post September 11th, a prayer offered by Gerry Hughes)The whole creation has been groaning in labour pains(Romans 8:18-27)

Cry of WonderGod’s eternal presence means that God is always fully present in every moment. God is not time bound nor is God space bound. God is the God of compassion. Consequently there is no place within our lives, no height or depth, no length or breadth of our inner states of fear or terror, of light or darkness, where God is not; always closer to us than we to ourselves and always beckoning us to take the leap of entrusting our whole being to the God for whom our hearts are created.(Gerry Hughes)

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The Journey

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2. It’s a Scary Place and Yet … ‘Being vulnerable is at the heart of transformation’Begin with lighting your candle and seeking your quietness. Focus on, perhaps hold, one of your symbols of transformation. Wonder and ponder for a few minutes, then place the symbol by the candle. If you wish, return to your own form of this mantra:

Thou O Lord art in our midst, Short period of quiet

Thou O Lord, art in our midstLife giver, Truth revealer, Pain bearer,Transforming presence,Compassionate One.

I hope you have a copy of a large painting, a gift from Kjell, my wife’s cousin. He lives in Kerstin’s home village in the forest area of central Sweden. The painting hangs on the wall close by in my much loved room. Kjell’s painting shows the daunting, red, rough approach to craggy snow-capped mountains, and the sense of the luminous beyond and more, shafts of light on the rugged way. ‘It is our journey’, Kjell says. Kjell was a social worker and has lived with Parkinson’s disease for over 25 years and in recent years with a form of leukaemia. A few years ago Kjell and his wife, Ingela, travelled to the hospital in Uppsala for an investigation and consultation in order to discover whether an operation on the brain would relieve some of the symptoms. Before he left home Kjell was very anxious. For both of them, however, the encounter with the medical team was a good experience. They returned home

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having been told that an operation would not be advisable, they must continue to learn to accept and live within the reality of ‘how it is’ and find fresh strategies as they turn into the future.They live, as do so many of us, within the prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr, written in 1934:

God grant me the serenityto accept the things I cannot change,courage to change the things I canand wisdom to know the difference.Amen

‘Being vulnerable’, Rowan Williams writes, ‘is at the heart of transformation.’ It belongs within the nature of the way.Our first session could have been entitled ‘the metamorphic process’ and wasn’t, and this session could be entitled ‘the liminal place’ and you will be relieved to know, isn’t.I am learning however that ‘the liminal place’ is the name given by some to describe the rugged terrain we must traverse as communities and also as individual pilgrims. It describes the ‘in between times’ within which we live, the incompleteness of things, the unresolvedness, including our experiencing loss of identity, direction, control, clarity, often accompanied by desolation.Others describe these rugged terrains as ‘the end times’, periods of profound transition within familiar institutions, organisations, religious, educational and social, and our need to help them die well. And more. The importance of our waiting and watching for the unfolding, the emerging of new patterns and forms belonging to what some call ‘resurrection.’ For some Jesus embodies the mystery of transformation. ‘ … in Jesus we find the agonising process of transformation to be the very nature of God’s engagement with humanity. To be followers of Jesus is to go to the depths of who we are, into the soup of metamorphosis, into the possibility that we might be

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consumed, destroyed, annihilated. To risk finding God, we must lose everything, and I mean everything, even God.’ (The Exuberant Church – Listening to the Prophetic People of God, Barbara Glasson, p. 44)And later, ’ … the liminal threshold is messy and full of confusion and contradiction. It is this very messiness that is the medium for re-creation. It is a troubling place, a place where the waters are disturbed and the self becomes immersed into new dimensions of being.’ (p. 96/7) And later ‘ … crucially this process holds the potential to bring about transformation not just for the individuals concerned but also for communities who would take the risk of entering the liminal space and accompany the transitional person across the threshold into new life.’ (p. 102) Sometimes when I stay within these words, read them out loud, tears rise and flow.

This, I am learning, is where resilience is forged. This is where the rumour of the strengthening by angels is known. This is where we may slowly and reluctantly learn to offer everything, ‘all things for transformation’.

Through the years a small group of priests, religious sisters, minsters with one or two spouses have met forming the Disability and Ministry Group. It is a small, fragile yet wondrous group of people gathering three or four times a year, still gathering with our sandwiches like children to a nursery. We live with a variety of conditions, physical disability, depression, cancer, the early stages of Alzheimer’s, dementia and other illnesses. We explore and affirm the ministry we are able to offer through our weakness, pain, darkness and limitation. We speak our truth openly among those who understand. We gather not to grumble and complain but rather to share what we are discovering. We encourage each other to make the connections between our

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experience of our own body with the body of Christ, between the vulnerability of Jesus and our own experience of weakness. Understandably we are hesitant to make these connections.We know what it is to be stripped of roles, responsibilities and masks, we know of nakedness and exposure, of loss of dignity and of humiliation. We know the raw terrains, the chemicalised numbness within which we learn the presence and goodness of God and within which we also sense the absence of God. And we laugh and laugh, we discover a deeper hope and trust and vitality.Jo belonged within that circle. She lived all her life with cerebral palsy, unable to move her limbs, unable to speak. She communicated through a ‘querty board’ which rested on her lap, a small light strapped to her forehead shining on the letters she wanted to pick out. At first some of us were a bit fearful of her, yet she became our friend. She listened more deeply than the words we speak, she drew us into the mystery of things.On one occasion we talked together of ‘the 2am vigil’, that period of the dark night when we are at our lowest, most lonely, when our imaginations become twisted and distorted, when pain in the body and soul overwhelms, when the will to carry on and on diminishes. We shared our strategies for traversing these domains until Jo made her familiar noises wanting to contribute. She spelt out two words: ‘Offer it’, and her husband John asked: ‘Is that it? Can you say more?’ Jo was silent, then two more words: ‘Toward God’. Jo returned to silence and with no further explanation. This is what she taught us. She re-aligned our being before God, not asking God to remove us from our reality but rather offering our experience of body, of soul, our experience of chaos and disorder toward God and for transformation. And this is the scary, wondrous mystery we are drawn into, and yes, we are right to be fearful and also thankful, thankful to God.

‘ … In the height and in the depth be praise.’ There is an offertory prayer in our Eucharist, Ordinary Seasons

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Lord and Giver of every good thing,we bring to youbread and wine for our communionlives and gifts for your kingdom,all for transformation through your grace and love,made known in Jesus Christ our Saviour.Amen(Archbishop Rowan Williams)

QuietWhat has touched us within this session? We have time to wonder and wander. Have any new symbols of transformation emerged?Our Pain and Hope group has developed a beautiful offertory prayer for use in a service of prayer for healing and wholeness. (See additional resources for this section.)

It’s a scary place and yet … Additional resources for reflection, contemplation Bible passages:

1.Corinthians 4:8-13, ‘Already you have all you want! … ’ 2 Corinthians 4:7-12, ‘But we have this treasure in clay jars

… ’ 2 Corinthians 6:3-10, ‘We are putting no obstacle in

anyone’s way … ’

‘ … In the height and in the depth be praise.’ (From the hymn Immortal, Invisible, W Chalmers Smith)

Psalm91 is simply not true. God does not defend his people from wordly evil and He seems powerless or unwilling to protect them. The trust one has to develop in him lies far deeper, in the knowledge that he will be present in the deepest waters, the most acute pain, and in some apprehension of his will to transform things’ … ‘The definition of almighty means ‘that

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there is no evil out of which good cannot be brought’. ‘ … God has courage to trust in hopeless, helpless things, in gentle mercy, holiness, love crucified. ‘We have to learn to live in the tension which seems so much the crux of Christianity in which the present agony is also permeated with joy or the promise of joy … ’(Celebration, Margaret Spufford)Pain and transformation'Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing, that we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only ting strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.' All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we must assuredly transmit it.If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter.. If there isn't some way to find deeper meaning tour suffering, to find God that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down.'(Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr)During Lent our Church in Selly Oak hosted a remarkable series of paintings depicting ‘the stations of the cross.’ One painting shook me to the core and remains within me. The painting was of Jesus hung on the cross, his body twisting in anguish and more, as one heavily pregnant straining, heaving in the process of giving birth.(Donald Eadie)Gerry Hughes, after the horrors of the twin towers in New York on September 11th said, ‘There is no depth of evil where God is not. This is our hope.’ Alan Lewis, a professor of modern theology, during his living with terminal cancer wrote a remarkable book, ‘Between Cross

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and resurrection,’ In it he makes the testimony to ‘divine fertility within the context of the grave, the tomb the descent into hell.’ Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher and theologian writes: ‘I have occasionally described my stand point to my friends as ‘the narrow ridge’. I wanted this to express that I did not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolute, but on the narrow rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but the certainty of meeting that remains undisclosed.’John O’Donohue, writing of ‘the implicit priesthood of every human being,’ continues: ‘We are as nomads on the thresholds where fact and possibility, body and soul, quest and question, light and dark, past and future, time and eternity, memory and dream, visible and invisible meet, meet within the core depth and complexity of human nature.’ He also writes of ‘ … divine imagination, God as artist, as creator calling everything out of nothingness into life and being, all creation suffused with the secret presence of God. Everything that is, all of nature and human experience, all are ultimately grounded in divine presence. At times the divine presence is bright and sheltering and healing and at other times dark, cruel and destructive.’Gerry Hughes in God of Surprises: Christian experience confirms that we can only come to know the risen Christ when we have undergone some kind of death, some disillusionment, some sense of fear, hopelessness or meaninglessness and have not tried to anaesthetise ourselves against it. The answer lies in the pain, which is revealing to us our poverty and our need of God.

The peace of wild thingsWhen despair grows in meand I wake in the middle of the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drake

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Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the blind starswaiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.(Wendall Berry)

An offertory prayer belonging within an Order of Service for Healing and WholenessGod, Your Spirit breathes through all creation,You have made our bodies your dwelling place and home.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring to youBread and wine for our communion.Lives and gifts for your kingdom.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring the miracle that is our human body, Our joy, our pain.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our vulnerability.You offer yourself through everything,Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our forgetfulness. You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our wounds, our scars.You offer yourself through everything,

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Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our aloneness. You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our depression.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our disease, our unease.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our anger.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our tears.You offer yourself through everything, Transform our lives through grace and love. We bring our ‘yes’ to transformation,Our openness to your life in our frailty,All this and more we bring.All for transformation through grace and love,made known in Jesus Christ our Saviour.Amen

Poem at a Healing Service‘Go in peace,Your faith has made you whole.’If you asked me why I am here,What I expect,How I understand healingFor each and for all,I would not know what to say.But I would still be here,With others, equally unsure,With you, who share our pain.

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All we offer is uncertainty:Our night questions,Our pain or fear or regret,Our sighs and longings,Our restless hearts,Our emptiness and the emptiness of our world.And somehow this is faith,Reaching out to touchTorn hands and a wounded side,And straining to hear,Beyond the questions, your wordThat makes us well,That makes all things well.(Tony McClelland)

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Kneeling

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3. ‘Yes’ to TransformationFollowing Our Stories of Unfolding, Emerging

Begin with lighting your candle and seeking your quietnessFocus on, perhaps hold one of the symbols of transformation, wonder and ponder for a few minutes. Then place the symbol by the candle.Remain within this short prayer even though it may puzzle you. It could become our daily mantra:

‘Bring us to the Third Day’ (Walter Brueggemman)

Stay within the quietness.The invitation is to share in the life of Jesus, his suffering, dying and rising. To enter the paschal mystery is to be drawn toward ‘the third day.’

Fluent I would love to liveLike a river flows,Carried by the surpriseOf its own unfolding. (Conomara Blues, John Donohue)

Read it again and this time out loudAnother angel story and this time from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Dante’s dream he sees an angel on the far side of the fire and marvels at the beauty of the angels’ singing voice. Then the angel addresses the travellers:

Holy souls, there’s no way on or roundBut through the bit of fire; in then, and come!

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Nor be you deaf to what is sung beyond. (Dark Wood to White Rose, Journey and Transformtation, Helen Luke)

Transformational storiesSome of us learn through stories, through story – telling and through our reflecting on the hidden meaning to be found within their mysterious, many layered connections and resonances.Woven within our daily human stories is what Thomas Keating calls the ‘ … consent to be transformed, our yielding, trusting into the unimaginable beyond … ’ Resistance, fear, anxiety, evasion, terror in the letting go, in the loss of control also belong within our daily human story. The elder brother, in the story of the returning prodigal son ‘heard the music and would not go in … ’ resisting the pleading of his father to join in the celebrations. (Luke 15:25-35)During three periods in hospital for spinal surgery the ward had the same senior nurse from Northern Borneo. On occasions, when there were hidden tensions about to burst in the ward, he’d choose to stand conspicuously still in a place where all could see and hear. He told parables from his culture which could be understood at many levels. The nurses, doctors, cleaners and patients all stopped what they were doing and listened. He addressed us in a direct yet whimsical way, gentle and with a light touch, without judgement, somehow diffusing situations with the potential for eruption, transforming the dynamics of the ward and leaving us all with life questions to live with. ‘This is how he runs the ward’, nurse said to me.Geoffrey Ainger, whom we first knew in our Notting Hill years, was a great story-teller until his dying day, a man with a rare gift of discernment and a craft which helped us recognise the story of God woven within the great Biblical stories, Abraham and Sarah, Ruth and Hagar, Jacob and Esau and more, the story of God woven even within our own stories, the stories of turbulence and conflictual nations, political processes, stories of changing

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human communities and also the story of our own becoming human. (Becoming Human –an appreciation of the life and ministry of Geoffrey Ainger, Warren Bardsley).Hiddenness lies within the unfolding and emerging, it belongs to the nature of our transformative stories and laughter and music resonate within everything and everyone within these messy mysteries. Donald Eadie

‘Yes’ to transformationIn 2002 we received an invitation to attend the Methodist Conference in Sri Lanka. My response was an intuitive ‘yes.’ Later we learned that some of our friends were surprised, fearful for us, the terrain we would be entering and crossing in our vulnerability and unknowing. The President of the Sri Lankan Conference, Noel Fernando, was I discovered, a quiet, modest man, rather conservative. In the summer of 2002 during a cease fire within the civil war the President recommended that the 39th Methodist Conference since autonomy be relocated to Kalmunai in the Eastern province. This carried a significance we were only slowly to comprehend. The long journey to the east coast by both Tamil and Singhala involved travelling through many military check points and mine fields, into areas dominated by the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam. The ‘yes’ to the historic entering and crossing was all the more remarkable because it was made months before the cease fire in February 2002 and met with considerable resistance. Tamils and Singhala members of Conference, travelled on motorbikes, in cars, vans and buses. Conference opened with a procession through the streets, Tamils and Singhala side by side, singing, yes, singing. Only later did I begin to understand the fuller meaning of this prophetic sign.

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A friend came to see me and began by finding her tissues, smiling and saying, ‘I’m probably going to cry a lot!’ In recent years she had experienced much loss. To my surprise and also her own, within the breakdowns, within the breaking open, there had been a breaking through, and a following within the unfolding, the emerging. She told how she had given her ‘Yes’ to opportunities she would not previously even have considered. ‘Yes’ to a school cycling tour in Holland this summer, ‘yes’ to an evening class on cycle maintenance, exchanging wheels and repairing tyres. ‘Yes’ to a working week in Mumbai and to a school trip to the Lake District. ‘Yes’ to concerts and to the theatre, sometimes on her own. And ‘Yes’ within her reclaiming of music, her own preferences, not other people’s choice. And the desire to dance. (Permission has been given to share this story)Our stories include our consent to be transformed, our ‘Yes,’ our yielding, our trusting into the unimaginable beyond. Resistance and fear are also woven within our stories.In recent years I have been greatly moved by a poem written by Rashani, a 13th century Sufi mystic. It is not an easy poem to embrace. It may help to read it aloud and more than once.

There is a broken-nessout of which comes the unbrokenshatterednessout of which blooms the unshatterable.There is a sorrow beyond all griefwhich leads to joyand a fragilityout of whose depths emerges strength.There is a vast spacetoo vast for wordsthrough which we pass with each loss.out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.

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There is a crydeeper than soundwhose serrated edges cut the heartas we break opento a place insidewhich is unbreakable and wholewhile learning to sing

To close, a glimpse into yet another story.Mrs Noble was in her middle 90’s when she eventually went into the St Charles hospital in North Kensington. She was, I recall in the corner bed near the door where the nurses could keep an eye on her. She was frail yet resilient. She had a twinkle in her eyes that springs from eternity. And she sang quietly to herself, the hymns that belonged within her soul. She shone, radiantly and had an effect on the staff, patients and visitors as few that I have known.Enter the quietnessWe began with reminders: mysteries are to be entered and explored rather than explained. We approach only the foothills.What new symbols of transformation have emerged? What are your stories of transformation? Have you a soul friend with whom you can share what is emerging?Enter the quietness

‘Bring us to the day’ Repeat and remain within this short prayer for a few minutes

QuietnessConclude if you wish with the mantra we began with: Thou O Lord art in our midstShort period of quiet

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Thou O Lord, art in our midst,Life giver, Truth revealer, Pain bearer,Transforming presence,Compassionate One.

Quietness‘Yes’ to transformation – additional resources

We look with uncertaintybeyond the old choices forclear-cut answersto a softer, more permeable alivenesswhich is every momentat the brink of death;for something newis being born in usif we but let it. we stand at a new doorway,awaiting that which comes…daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence,learning to love.’(Anne Hillman)

Biblical transformational storiesGenesis 45: The story of Joseph meeting his family in EgyptRuth 1: The story of Ruth in a far off landLuke 15:11-32: The story of the prodigal and his brother

Death is likened not to an ending but a transition. And sometimes within this transition there are muffled echoes, resonances, reminding us of our long journey into the deep love of God, and of the home coming-even of tumultuous welcome, and of the ‘well done.’ And the sounds of a feast, a feast prepared for all people, and of rejoicing, and the sound of music.

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‘I want to hear these words on my dying day: ‘They hear as music what we hear as pain,’ a friend said on his last visit to our home before he died. Another spoke of ‘those new recruits to heaven who know more deeply the mercy and joy of God than they had learned on earth.’ (Donald Eadie)

During Lent many years ago our Church in Selly Oak hosted a remarkable series of paintings depicting ‘the stations of the cross.’ One painting shook me to the core and remains with me. The painting was of Jesus hung on the cross, his body twisting in anguish and more, as one heavily pregnant straining, heaving in the process of giving birth.

ResurrectionI think it took her death to do it.The light that emanated from the space she left spoke resurrection.Who she was took hold of time and turned it inside out,and the old laughter which tooksuch toll of pompous hats and dirgy hymnswas transfigured into somethingwhich got under the skin of sufferingand put it in its place.So now I tell the secretthat resurrection is the glassthrough which we see things differently,and what was first in the mind of Godbecomes the truth at last.(David Scott)

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During three periods in hospital, I caught a glimpse of something I find hard to express. What is it deep down within us that at times permits those territories within us that frighten us, the dark, negative and destructive within us, to be not only recognised but somehow mysteriously transformed. The harshness is not removed, yet it becomes the context for deepening and growing. Why it happens for some and not for to others remains a mystery. This is true both for individuals and communities. For a moment I became aware of what transformation could be about. (Grain Winter, Donald Eadie, Epworth Press)

‘Much play is made of the power of Christianity to transform evil into good. Christ the transformer of culture: the conversion of an individual or group: the transformation of personality. This is true but it is also important to face the limits of transformation: caste continues in India, tribalism in Rwanda and Congo, authoritarianism in Northern Ireland and in Roman Catholicism. Christianity fails to get to grips on ethnic rivalry except in promising signs of the Kingdom like Corrymela, Mandela and Neva Shalom … ’(An unpublished paper, Michael Wilson)

If the creation is the work of love, its ‘security’ lies not in its conformity to some predetermined plan but in the unsparing love which will not abandon a single fragment of it, and man’s assurance must be the assurance not that all that happens is determined by God’s plan but that all that happens is encompassed by His love.

That kind of infinitely patient and creative love is difficult even to begin to imagine. The gospel writers struggle to express it when they see it in Jesus who accepts the tragedy of Calvary, and in accepting it transforms it into God’s redeeming victory.

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Matthew, Mark, Luke and John work as poets, saying in words what they know can never truly be said. Perhaps after all it is the poet who can help us to sense what the love of God must be like.(Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, W.H.Vanstone)

A shocking communion Linking us with the crucified and rising body of Christ in all humanity:Countless millions within our human family are born into the community of the world’s ‘pain bearers,’ they live with relentless poverty and disease, with environmental poisoning, with hurricane and tsunami, with the traumas of war. They have little if any access to Orthopaedic Hospitals, physiotherapists, medication, psychiatric and mental health workers, to help them endure their bodily and psychological pain. My own journey with my body has scarcely begun to make the connections into this wider solidarity. I write as a Christian who is becoming conscious of a ‘communion’ that lies beyond the traditional images of the Body of Christ in the institutional Church, a bodily ‘communion’ that mysteriously, shockingly links us with the crucified and rising body of Christ in all humanity. (The Foothills of Transformation, Donald Eadie, Iona Books 2019)

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contemplations for - birminghammethodist.org.uk · web viewit is said, ‘when the candle is lit...

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