Learning by heart

 

It was a beautiful autumnal morning as I walked across to chapel first thing.  A mist hung over the fields with a hazy sun shining through low on the horizon.  The apple trees stood in the orchard loaded with their fruit.  The wood pigeons cooed, some far away, some near, and after the extraordinarily busy day yesterday (the Launde Abbey “Fun Day”) when the world and his wife seemed to be visiting, the whole world seemed today to be wrapped in peace, softness and quietness.

 

As I walked the words of the first poem I ever had to learn in secondary school came into my head, John Keat’s, “To Autumn.”

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

 

And as I said the words over I was glad, as I always am to find in them a response to what I was seeing and feeling.  I thought of one or two other poems I had been made to learn at school or come to though my father (a great lover of poetry) and how through the years I had come appreciate the way that words, like music, come back to us and enrich us because we have learnt them “by heart.”

 

It is an interesting phrase, “learning by heart.”  We don’t, of course, really learn by heart.  We learn by rote, by repeating something over and over again until our memory stores it.  But in the process some words call out to us and delight us and become etched into our feelings.  The pulling of these words out of our store of memories at opportune moments enriches our experience and widens and deepens our hearts’ response.  We greet the words as old friends we have not seen for some time.

 

Faith is all about learning by heart.  What we first learn as story becomes carved into our very being – and if we do not learn “by heart” as well as “by head” ours will be an empty experience.  Faith, too, has words we learn by heart: words that bring strength and comfort to difficult times and express love and praise when our hearts are so full we want to sing out loud.  When I was fifteen and lost my mother I was greatly comforted by Christ’s promise in the last verse of Matthew’s gospel,

 

And remember I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

 

I would repeat it to myself often as I waited for sleep at night.

 

The special power of words engraved into the memory is that the heart and mind over time have time to ponder and meditate over them.  Particularly with words of scripture as the mind turns them over the heart leaps to understanding so that old, well known passages bring out of their store new, life-giving things.  Learnt by heart words long known continue to have power, not least to surprise us.

  Re-naming Sin

The word “sin” was a no-no with the last Confirmation group I led. Within the group were five people who had been brought up in Roman Catholics families, one of whom was from an Eastern European background and two from Irish. As soon as I used the word “sin” they almost visibly withdrew into a rather defensive and angry position. When I asked why the answer came that they had been loaded down with a sense of “sin” during their upbringing and if the Anglican Church was going to do the same, they wanted none of it. We had to find other ways of naming “sin.”

 

This week I talked to a woman, once a committed churchgoer, who had also rejected the Church because of its language about various things. Its emphasis on “sin” was one of them. Yet as she shared her vision about who God is in language she felt comfortable with, there was absolutely nothing that I couldn’t accept as orthodox Christian belief, but put in a rather refreshing way.

 

As I prepared to say the Confession in the Eucharist today, I thought of these people and all the ways I had “sinned” in my understanding of that word, this week. During this last week I have on occasions quite consciously turned away from God, been resistant to him, been half-hearted in what I have done on his behalf, fallen short (and sometimes more than short) in thought, word and deed in my dealings with other people. But I was rescued a long time ago from the heavy, heavy burden that so many people seem to carry because of this word “sin” and I think I was rescued because that word and lots of other theological words, were explained well to me along with the loving, forgiving nature of God. Sin was explained like this.

 

Imagine you have a bow and arrow and you are shooting at a target. You aim towards the bull’s eye, but if your aim is just an iota off by the time it reaches the target it will be way off the bull’s eye and might even miss the target altogether. This “missing the mark” is what sin is. Once I understood this I also comprehended how temptation to do something which is not in the end good for us, so often comes wrapped up in what seems acceptable. We can think we are travelling in the right direction but something pulls us off course.

 

The conversation with the lady this week reminded me that there are many serious seekers out there who are prevented from penetrating deeply into the gospel by religious language. It made clear to me yet again that I have to learn to listen much better to their language about God and their longing for him rather than insist on using my own. Perhaps we all need to realise that some of the religious language we habitually use doesn’t mean the same to others as to us. Some of it carries such loaded cultural history that it wounds people rather than rescues them and portrays an image of God that is not loving but condemning. No wonder they run a mile.

 

Trusting in a Promise

 

In the television programme, “The ‘A’ Team,” one of the characters, John “Hannibal” Smith had a catch-phrase, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Every now and then I have the same feeling when everything in a service comes together, or even a whole day.

 

We had such a day at Launde Abbey yesterday with two joyful celebrations. In the morning Eucharist we thanked God for the Golden Wedding anniversary of a couple who were staying with us. In the afternoon we baptised a baby. What kicked the whole day into gear for me were the Sunday readings which were about God’s promise to Abram (Abraham) and Abram’s response of faith and trust, which was then reflected upon by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. As I researched and reflected on the readings I realised how a promise changes the future.

 

When two people stand up in front of their family and friends and say “I will” in response to the invitation to love and cherish each other and to remain faithful to that vow or promise through thick and thin until death, they are changing the future not just by their intention for the future but by the very act in the present. All is changed by the love, hope and faithfulness that is expressed in that public declaration. Courage, confidence and freedom are the gifts that the union brings when a person is prepared to say to another, “Out of all the people in the world who I could chose to love and spend my life with, I chose you.” How impressive is that when you think about it!

 

A promise is not material. Just as Abram could not count the stars in the sky which God invited him to look at, promising him that his descendents would be more than them, so any promise or vow has elements of the unknown. I may promise to love you in sickness and in health, but how that love may be called forth, what we may have to face together, no one can say. The point is that the promise is something we lean into: something that we make work day by day because we have faith in the one who made the promise to us.

 

Baptism is similar. We make statements of intent rather than promises but underneath all that we do is our belief in the love of God for the unique individual who is being presented for baptism. If parents and Godparents can receive the promise God has made, to be with the child “until the end of time,” if they can lean into that promise of future care for the child, taking seriously their commitment to bring them up to know their loving Father, then the child in turn may have the opportunity to understand the commitment He has made to them. They will grow in confidence, courage and freedom because they know God loves them.

 

Promises change the future in a tangible way. They change not just the people who make them but the community in which those people live. Promises can, of course, be bad as well as good; they can lead to damaging, hurtful actions where the intention is corrupt. Promises can also, with the best of intentions, go wrong. But whatever mess we might make of our lives, God’s promise to love and care for us is unchangeable. He does not promise that we will never suffer but he promises he will be there in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty. If we live this promise into the future we find it is true.

 

Outrageous Hospitality

 

I thought I knew, at least technically, what hospitality was before I came to Launde Abbey but a few months here has taught me that I have a great deal to learn.  Hospitality is not just about offering a welcome, good food, kindness and a lovely bedroom in which to stay the night.  Hospitality is first and foremost about an interior attitude, a generosity of spirit that has real intentionality about it.

 

At Launde Abbey we welcome different individuals and different groups almost daily.  Every guest is unique.  Every group has its own set of unique needs.  The differences inevitably set up tensions inside us but I believe these tensions are there for us to work with creatively and in doing so to begin to understand the outrageous hospitality that is the essence of the gospel.

 

What I noticed was happening inside me after I had lived here for a few months was that I was taking on ownership of Launde Abbey in an emotional way.  This was hardly surprising.  I live here, this is my home.  It is also a space made sacred by our visitors’ desires, needs, attitudes and actions.  It is a place that needs to be safeguarded and as such I felt it should be treated in such and such a way.  But this is where I realised I needed to be careful.  I was becoming possessive of the place and in my attitude I was in danger of becoming the church “police.”   I didn’t realise it but I was closing down inside myself to some of the people who come.  I was not being outrageously hospitable.

 

Some groups are Christian in a way that I recognise and feel at home with.  Others are travelling in a way that I don’t always understand.  Some people love silence.  Others long for communication.  Some people come to Launde avowedly  “non-Christian”, “non-spiritual,”  or “non-religious.”  They simply want to use the facilities which they appreciate usually very much.  Others simply don’t appear to want or value what I value.  This I recognised can hurt.  It can feel like a rejection of myself. 

 

But I am now recognising that the invitation Christ offers in his gospel is to look beyond the superficial understanding of hospitality which I spoke of in the opening paragraph.  In his life Jesus opened his arms wide to all those who didn’t play the religious game as those who ran the organisation thought they should.  He healed on the Sabbath.  He allowed his disciples to pick ears of corn on the Sabbath and eat them, to eat with unwashed hands.  Jesus touched lepers, ate with those who most certainly would have made us feel very uncomfortable had we lived then, and washed dirty sweaty feet.  He absolutely and consciously broke the accepted social rules of hospitality and in his teaching and behaviour went straight to the heart of the matter.  True hospitality lives in the place where we put ourselves out – out of our comfort zones and into a place of vulnerability.  True hospitality is putting myself in another person’s skin: seeing the world though their eyes.  True hospitality is in the heart.  It is the conscious and intentional opening of ourselves to the other and making the stranger the friend.