One of the things that most of us have to do is a budget, be it a weekly working out of household costs or at work. As a parish priest I had to learn how to work within a budget for the church. Fortunately, we were blessed with a good treasurer and a church warden who was also an accountant, so I could for the most part, let them do most of the number crunching. But there was always that dark evening in November when we had to sit down and face the hard choices: to keep within our predicted income we had to make cuts. What was going to go? These decisions were hard because they were so often about ethical choices or about mission or about something for which we really had a passion. But it made me think. If it was hard for us in our little parish church how tough must it be for all those who in these financially demanding times are having to make cuts in public spending?

How do we make hard decisions? It has been pointed out to me recently that in most church business meetings we start with a five minute prayer and finish with something like the Grace. In between we do not refer anything to God at all, except perhaps in passing. We do not say, “Hey, let’s stop and pray about this.” Yet Christ’s instruction is to “Pray at all times and never lose heart” (Luke 18:1).” In a way, this is how the monastic idea of “praying the hours”, the periods of the day, came in. This is why religions like Judaism and Islam make such a point of stopping throughout the day to pray – much more so than Christianity. But this is really the saying of prayers (plural), different from prayer (singular). The one tends to be collective and verbal, the other tends to be private and silent. We need both. But when Jesus told us to “Pray at all times,” I think he was asking us to shoot all our activities through with the latter, prayer; to stop when we got stuck and turn to him.

During our budget meeting for Launde we got stuck. I joined the meeting late on in the day to find out where we had got to. Those who had been working at it all day were exhausted and deflated. So we decided to stop and just be silent for five minutes. Those who wanted to were invited to pray quietly and if you didn’t want to, you could just sit and be still. I must admit, the cynical side of me didn’t believe it would make much difference, but the other side was saying, “Give God a chance to talk to you about this.” In the event, one completely new and very viable idea was brought to the table and two others gained real clarity and confirmation in that five minutes of silent turning to God.

This is the second time in six months that I have seen this invitation to pray work. Both were in church business meetings when things were either stuck or threatened to unravel. So perhaps it is time to take Jesus’ instruction seriously, not only in our everyday private life (pray as you make the shopping list, pray as you shop, pray on the train to work or in the car, pray for people at the school gates or on the phone etc) but much more so in our church business meetings. Should not every decision we make on behalf of the kingdom of God be checked out with God? And in these times of money shortages and anxiety in the Church about money and falling congregation, should we not especially remember the second half of Christ’s instructions and be comforted by it, “Pray at all times and never lose heart.”

“I love it when a plan comes together,” said John ‘Hannibal’ Smith, a character in the television series from the 1980s called the ‘A’ Team.  I get the same sense of frisson when a whole series of small incidents seem to coincide, as if someone somewhere is trying to get a point across.

There was just such an occasion a couple of days ago when I was staying with some friends.  First, I watched a television programme about Stonehenge.  Then I was given a cup of tea in a mug with a picture of Stonehenge on it; and finally I opened the book I was reading at the fifth chapter to find that the whole of the first two paragraphs referred to Stonehenge.  But the sense of excitement came not from Stonehenge in the end but from what the writer of my book suggested it illustrated: the “temp” part of the word “contemplation.”  This was new to me and thrilling, so I am passing it on.

The word “temp” comes from the same root as “notch”; notch as in a mark made in a stick or on a stone to denote a measurement.  So you might measure the length of something by marking a notch on your piece of wood and then another mark to denote the end of what you are marking.  Thus, “temp” is a measure of something as in temperament (the measurement of somebody’s emotional or psychological state), tempo (the measure of musical beat), temporary ( denoting a short or impermanent time) or temporal (meaning a state of chronological time or something worldly or earthly.)  There are plenty more words with “temp” in them to illustrate the meaning.

But however the word might be used today, originally it was not an earthbound word but a measurement for the heavens, the place where people looked for answers.  The augurs in ancient Rome would gaze at the stars to see if the deities favoured or disapproved of actions proposed by the city.  This was what Stonehenge was supposed in part to do.  It was, amongst other things, a giant time piece which denoted the summer and winter equinoxes and the full moons.  Whoever used it was doing so in order to study the stars and to listen to the gods.  But over time the place below from which the heavens were studied became a sacred space and took on the name of “temp, as well.”  From this we get the Latin word “templum.”  This was not a building but a sacred space and, eventually, this became temple, the place or building in which the higher things, the things of God, are studied and worshipped; where, earthbound as we are, we can measure the heavens.

Contemplation is therefore that state in which we deliberately place ourselves in a position to measure, spend time with, reflect on that which is ‘higher.’  “Con” means “with” so we are putting ourselves with the reflecting or meditating time.  It is a purposeful act but it is also a natural one.  It is an action that has been innate in human beings from the beginning.

We still gaze up at the stars and it is right that we do so because they are wonderful and they give us a sense of proportion.  We no longer worship the stars, however.  Nor do we believe anymore that we have to worship in the temple of Jerusalem for our faith to be genuine.  The “temple” became for Christians, the person of Jesus Christ.  It is when we gaze on him, when we spend time with him, that our eyes, hearts, minds and spirits look heavenward.

“Listen, my son.”

These are the famous words with which the Rule of St Benedict begins. Before anything else, before any reference to God, the Bible or the Church, Benedict commands his monks to listen. But this word, listen, is not to be translated casually. It denotes acute attention. Someone once described it to me as the way a doctor will listen with concentration using his stethoscope.

To listen has its root in the same word as to obey. The person listening is doing so from choice, from will, desirous of following what is being offered. So listening of this sort is the first step in obedience. We have to listen to hear what God wants. Jesus was always telling his followers to listen.

Listening of this sort is not superficial, surface listening. And it is not just done with the ears, but with the eyes, nose, through taste, touch, the mind and the heart. It can happen only when we are attentive and awake to the present moment. Because we are all weak and frail human beings much more often asleep than awake, we find it hard to listen. But we take in more than we consciously know which is why using a prayer like the Examin at the end of the day, alerts us to experiences we were often hardly aware of at the time.

If we listen: try to remain awake and alert, we become aware that God is speaking to us all the time, through everything in creation. We know he speaks through the Word made flesh and through the word of scripture, through art, music, poetry, worship, silence, nature and human relationships. We know he is the God of surprises who sometimes talks to us through quite ordinary small things which we see (or perhaps don’t really see) every day – and then one day we wake up and we have listened with our eyes and the veil over them has gone.

Jesus spoke to us in metaphor and parable, and God still does when we listen with all of our being.   “It is as if…,” Jesus begins his story. One thing puts us in touch with another and the story unfolds or the memory is nudged or consciousness awakens.

Just lately, I have had more opportunity to listen. I have had to be out of the house early to walk the dog so instead of rushing straight to work I have meandered through Launde’s gardens at dawn. Yesterday, as I walked, the sky was clear and the sun was just above the horizon: an extraordinary and huge ball of copper fire backed by a rose-pink sky. Today at the same time, there was mist and darkness, dripping trees, wet undergrowth, and a sense of presence in the shadowed woods. As I walked through the Launde copse, spiders’ webs kept catching my face and when I reached the Calvery and stared up at the figure of Christ which was silhouetted against the lightening sky I saw that a spider had made a web in the armpit of the statue. It hung like lace between arm and rib cage and Christ’s face turned gently towards it, seemed to be observing it – this tiny creature that had made its lair under the protective arm of Christ.

There were the dripping trees, the silhouetted face of Christ turned towards this tiny part of his creation. And there, right there, was the whole world.