a ministry scrapbook
Spirituality “must now touch every area of human experience, the public and the social, the painful, negative, even pathological byways of the mind, the moral and relational world.”
Rowan Williams
“Spiritualities that are disengaged from the world, rather than committed to it and to its transformation, fail to reflect the irrevocable commitment of God to the world in Jesus Christ.”
>It is easy to believe we are ‘cursed’ – naturally, not supernaturally, I mean.
The media messages pick on our personal, social and institutional points of vulnerability. All these voices leave us with a deep sense of unease.
If we feel cursed ourselves the likelihood is that we will curse others.
However, if we know we are blessed the likelihood is that we will bless others. I know how much I curse others, and I know how much I bless others – and can draw my own conclusion that I haven’t been doing enough listening to the voices that call me blessed. I know I am not alone in finding it hard to accept blessing and to treasure the blessings people give.
Blessing comes from the Latin word “benediction” meaning “speaking well”. Jesus has a warning for us when too many speak well of us (Luke 6:26) that means we might have become too powerful, boastful and corruptible – but all of us need to be affirmed.
Nouwen points out that this is the way to “a sense of well-being and true belonging” and was moved by the blessing given to a 13 year old at his bar-mitzvah by his parents: “Son, whatever will happen to you in your life, whether you will have success or not, become important or not, will be healthy or not, always remember how much your mother and I love you.”
For Nouwen, prayer is about listening to that voice of blessing – to hear with the “ear of faith” the persistent voice of love saying “You are my beloved child – on you my favour rests.”
The blessings are there for us to receive.
“the blessings of the poor who stop us on the road, the blessings of the blossoming trees and fresh flowers that tell us about new life, the blessings of music, painting sculpture, and architecture – all of that – but most of all the blessings that come to us through words of gratitude, encouragement, affection and love. These many blessings do not have to be invented. They are there, surrounding us on all sides. But we have to be present to them and receive them. They don’t force themselves on us. They are gentle reminders of that beautiful, strong, but hidden voice of the one who calls us by name and speaks good things about us.”
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We don’t hear much of what God (as Father) has to say in the gospels. He does say to Jesus “You are my beloved”, and then Jesus says to us “as the Father loves me so I love you”, so Jesus had the clear intention that we would know ourselves as “beloved”.
It is for us to hear this one voice above all the other voices that crowd our minds – all with the same basic message “Prove yourself. You are guilty until proved innocent” – so we try to prove ourselves through our image, through our hard work – and still those voices refuse to believe us, perhaps because in all our hearts of hearst we know that we are guilty. There’s always something of ourselves we need to hide away. “If they knew what I was really like they would never love me” – and so we bury our shame.
There is a beautiful story in Genesis of Adam hiding his shame. But God searches out Adam and his shame – and in the lovely story of the return of the prodigal the father embraces the shame of his son. (The picture is from the Poor Clare Colettine Community at Hawarden and shows the embrace of the prodigal)
When Jesus says “I love you” he means us to to know that God loves us. He knows that we all have a dark place in which we hide our shame. We do not have to prove ourselves before God loves us.
Henri Nouwen wrote of “being the beloved” and claimed that the greatest temptation is “self-rejection”, the flip side of which is “arrogance”. He wrote:
Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain.
This video is worth a watch/listen – a sermon from Henri Nouwen.
>When I go to church to pray this is what I do:
I shift some books around, put waste paper in bin, rearrange furniture, sit down, stand up, fiddle.
Except if I am not on my own, when this is what I do:
read the psalms, read the Bible, pray for the peace of the world and those who I know who are in trouble.
When I jog, this is what I do:
entertain random thoughts which seem to rearrange my priorities and set my mind on higher things, and as if that wasn’t enough prayer, a “You lift them up, I put them down” prayer as the road rises up to beat me.
When I want to pray, what should I do?
Go for a run, I guess, or at least, when I go to church, give thanks for the others who help me to pray.
Grits and Grains 
